Shal­iza Has­sanali

Of­fi­cials of the Es­tate Po­lice As­so­ci­a­tion (EPA) are con­cerned that de­fi­ciences high­light­ed in an in­ter­im se­cu­ri­ty au­dit by the T&T Civ­il Avi­a­tion Au­thor­i­ty (TTCAA) could re­sult in the coun­try's two in­ter­na­tion­al air­ports be­ing down­grad­ed. They claim the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al and ANR Robin­son Air­ports could slide from Cat­e­go­ry 1 to 2, for fail­ing to meet stan­dards set by the In­ter­na­tion­al Civ­il Avi­a­tion Or­gan­i­sa­tion (ICAO).

EPA's sec­ond vice-pres­i­dent Em­manuel Hen­ry said the TTCAA has to en­sure the stan­dards of ICAO are car­ried out. ICAO has the pow­er to down­grade the air­ports. Hen­ry blamed a chron­ic short­age of se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers and a break­down in wage ne­go­ti­a­tions for the prob­lems.

Yes­ter­day, in re­sponse to the EPA's claims, the AATT an­nounced that is­sues raised in the se­cu­ri­ty au­dit will be dealt with in a com­pre­hen­sive plan. "The de­tails em­a­nat­ing from such re­ports seek to iden­ti­fy any gap that may ex­ist and make rec­om­men­da­tions to plug such gaps," the AATT ex­plained.

Hadeed-ig­no­rance of the high­est or­der

TTCAA di­rec­tor-gen­er­al, Ramesh Lutch­me­di­al, re­fused to com­ment on the is­sue, say­ing it was sen­si­tive and a mat­ter he "could not put out in the pub­lic do­main". How­ev­er, AATT chair­man, Ger­ald Hadeed, re­fut­ed the EPA's al­le­ga­tions. He said the AATT and TTCAA have been com­ply­ing with ICAO stan­dards and he de­nounced the group's claims as "ig­no­rance of the high­est or­der".

Hadeed said the coun­try's air­ports will nev­er be down­grad­ed. He said since re­ceiv­ing the find­ings of the au­dit three weeks ago, the AATT has im­ple­ment­ed a 29-page cor­rec­tive-ac­tion plan. "Our board re­alis­es how im­por­tant se­cu­ri­ty is. From the cor­rec­tive-ac­tion plan we have put in place, we do take this very se­ri­ous­ly."

Hadeed said the is­sues raised in the au­dit were mi­nor and re­lat­ed to train­ing and non-func­tion­al air­port equip­ment.

Ma­haraj-EPA play­ing pol­i­tics

Trans­port Min­is­ter De­vant Ma­haraj ac­cused the EPA of play­ing pol­i­tics be­cause of their cur­rent im­passe with the AATT board. "It's a raw, naked po­lit­i­cal agen­da," he de­clared. Ma­haraj said the AATT's is work­ing fever­ish­ly to en­sure that the air­ports will nev­er be down­grad­ed. He added: "You don't down­grade an air­port just so. If that is the case, hun­dreds and mil­lions of air­ports all over the world will shut down."

Au­dit re­port shows:

The au­dit re­port, dat­ed Feb­ru­ary 27, 2012, showed 13 ar­eas, which need im­prove­ment:

• In­ter­na­tion­al pas­sen­ger screen­ing check­points not ad­e­quate­ly staffed.

• Screen­ing per­son­nel ap­peared fa­tigued, hav­ing worked the night shift in­to the morn­ing, re­sult­ing in in­com­pe­ten­cies in the ap­pli­ca­tion of pro­ce­dures and process­es.

• AATT has not es­tab­lished poli­cies and pro­ce­dures for han­dling sus­pect or un­at­tend­ed bag­gage.

• No ex­plo­sive-trace de­tec­tion or oth­er ad­vanced screen­ing tech­nolo­gies to sup­port cur­rent con­ven­tion­al screen­ing tech­nolo­gies used at pas­sen­ger- and cab­in-screen­ing check­points, to en­hance de­tec­tion ca­pa­bil­i­ties.

• No spe­cialised equip­ment, such as an ex­plo­sives-con­tain­ment cham­ber, or dis­pos­al mech­a­nisms, or portable ex­plo­sive-trace de­tec­tion ca­pa­bil­i­ties for deal­ing with sus­pect im­pro­vised ex­plo­sive de­vice in bag­gage, car­go, mail or oth­er un­at­tend­ed ar­ti­cles at the air­port.

• No con­tin­gency plan to deal with acts of un­law­ful in­ter­fer­ence at the air­port.

• Fail­ure to con­duct ta­ble-top, par­tial or full-scale ex­er­cis­es, re­lat­ing to an act of un­law­ful in­ter­fer­ence.

• At the de­par­ture lev­el, where ac­cess is con­trolled by key­pads and mag­net­ic ac­cess cards, lock and key sys­tem not prop­er­ly func­tion­ing.

• Doors 13 and 14 at board­ing gates were found opened and un­at­tend­ed while no air­craft op­er­a­tion was tak­ing place.

• Au­di­tors were able to gain en­try in­to the ster­ile area from air­side via doors on the jet-bridge, which were left un­locked and un­at­tend­ed af­ter air­craft op­er­a­tions had ceased.

• One door, which se­cures the jet-bridge from unau­tho­rised ac­cess from the air­side, had a bro­ken lock, while an­oth­er was found un­se­cured and un­at­tend­ed.

• A ve­hi­cle and its oc­cu­pants were al­lowed ac­cess to air­side through main air­side ac­cess con­trol gate with­out be­ing searched or screened.

• Light­ing fix­tures on the perime­ter fenc­ing lo­cat­ed north-east of the North Ter­mi­nal Build­ing and east of the South Ter­mi­nal not func­tion­ing.

• The AATT had not es­tab­lished and iden­ti­fied a des­ig­nat­ed em­ploy­ee-screen­ing check­point.

• No records to in­di­cate in­crease in pa­trols dur­ing the night and no foot pa­trol of the air­side was ob­served.

• No records to in­di­cate foot pa­trols were car­ried out.

• Sev­er­al cam­eras in the CCTV sur­veil­lance sys­tem were non-func­tion­al.

• Im­ages in a num­ber of cam­eras were hin­dered by the in­stal­la­tion of ar­ti­cles in the atri­um for Car­ni­val.

• The AATT in­ter­nal re­port showed no records of ac­tion be­ing tak­en to ad­dress the de­fi­cien­cies iden­ti­fied.

At ANR Robin­son Air­port:

• Sev­er­al ar­eas along the chain-link fence had de­te­ri­o­rat­ed, which was not re­flect­ed in the pa­trol log.

• Holes were ob­served in the fence.

• Perime­ter fence in the vicin­i­ty of Cus­toms and Ex­cise and the pub­lic food court showed ev­i­dence of climb­ing and that items may have been re­moved or in­tro­duced in­to the re­strict­ed area.

• Pa­trol re­ports not doc­u­ment­ed and record­ed.

• The ex­ist­ing height of the fence needs to be in­creased or a sec­ondary fence in­stalled due to the close prox­im­i­ty of pub­lic fa­cil­i­ties and ac­tiv­i­ties.