Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Roger Alexan­der has de­fend­ed Gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion to in­tro­duce the E-Pass­port sys­tem, ar­gu­ing that it was not on­ly more con­ve­nient for dai­ly tasks and record-keep­ing but would al­so en­sure a high­er de­gree of se­cu­ri­ty is main­tained.

“A cou­ple of months ago, be­fore I came in, we were still writ­ing on pieces of pa­per for record-keep­ing. We have since mod­ernised the sys­tem and con­tin­ue to im­prove the sys­tem,” Alexan­der said yes­ter­day.

“So, it’s about bor­der se­cu­ri­ty, which is part of the crime plan of this Gov­ern­ment to have bor­der se­cu­ri­ty. We want to know who comes in here, when they come in here, why they com­ing here and when they leave or if they’ve left the coun­try at all in fact.”

He al­so ac­cused the for­mer gov­ern­ment of “re­scind­ing” a con­tract that was award­ed to a pro­po­nent, which he said had led to dif­fi­cul­ties in the roll-out of the E-Pass­port sys­tem.

Re­fer­ring to a let­ter dat­ed Oc­to­ber 4, 2024, Alexan­der claimed that the doc­u­ment con­firmed that work on the E-Pass­port sys­tem was award­ed to a ser­vice provider, but lat­er re­scind­ed with­out any fur­ther ex­pla­na­tion.

An­oth­er is­sue he raised was what he claimed was the re­moval of a per­for­mance bond as part of the cri­te­ria for the con­tract.

“It is im­por­tant to note that when I took of­fice, there was no con­tract for e-pass­ports nor was there any con­tract for the main­te­nance of the Bor­der Man­age­ment Sys­tem,” he said, while not nam­ing the com­pa­ny.

“The com­pa­ny was op­er­at­ing on a month-to-month arrange­ment since 2023. My ad­min­is­tra­tion is­sued a one-year con­tract to the cur­rent provider for the main­te­nance of the sys­tem to en­sure cer­tain­ty while we tran­si­tion to E-Pass­port.”

Con­tact­ed on Alexan­der’s claims yes­ter­day, for­mer Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter and Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment Mar­vin Gon­za­les ac­cused Alexan­der of try­ing to dis­tract the pub­lic’s at­ten­tion from con­cerns over the pur­port­ed pass­port short­age and chal­lenged him to come for­ward and pro­vide full de­tails be­hind the E-pass­port con­tract and arrange­ment.

“He (Alexan­der) must give us the names of the com­pa­nies that were in­vit­ed to par­tic­i­pate in the ten­der and those that have been short­list­ed. He will not be al­lowed to throw up dis­trac­tions of ‘per­for­mance bonds,’ and ‘fail­ure to ex­e­cute a con­tract by the pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ment.’ We will not be dis­tract­ed by the gim­micks,” Gon­za­les said.

Gon­za­les al­so ac­cused Gov­ern­ment of fa­cil­i­tat­ing what he de­scribed as a “col­lapse” of the pass­port sys­tem to al­low oth­ers po­lit­i­cal­ly close to them to be award­ed a con­tract for pass­port book­lets.

Alexan­der’s com­ments came even as Guardian Me­dia re­cent­ly re­port­ed that the Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion has warned that the cur­rent stock of pass­port book­lets could be de­plet­ed in a few weeks.

How­ev­er, Alexan­der yes­ter­day again as­sured that there will be suf­fi­cient pass­ports to meet pub­lic de­mand un­til an ad­di­tion­al ship­ment is re­ceived in Sep­tem­ber to re­plen­ish the stock.

Alexan­der dou­bled down on his stance as he re­spond­ed to con­cerns raised by some frus­trat­ed pass­port-hold­ers who were turned back af­ter vis­it­ing the Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion’s Port-of-Spain of­fice yes­ter­day.

Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the of­fice on Rich­mond Street, where sev­er­al peo­ple were seen wait­ing in line from as ear­ly as 6 am to con­duct trans­ac­tions.

One man, iden­ti­fied on­ly as Marky, said he did not have an ap­point­ment and vis­it­ed the of­fice in the hope of do­ing a “walk-in” trans­ac­tion to re­new his pass­port. How­ev­er, he said de­spite wait­ing in line from 6.30 am, he was told to make an ap­point­ment or vis­it the San­gre Grande of­fice.

“It’s con­fu­sion be­cause you don’t know what line to go in, they didn’t sec­tionise it. When I fi­nal­ly reach up, they told me they tak­ing a cer­tain por­tion for col­lec­tion and they fa­cil­i­tate you if you have a prob­lem ..., come back Mon­day or go (San­gre) Grande. They said they were filled up and they were on­ly tak­ing a cer­tain amount of walk-ins.”

An­oth­er man, who asked not to be named, said he was sim­i­lar­ly dis­ap­point­ed, as he left the Ch­agua­nas Im­mi­gra­tion Of­fice on Thurs­day and vis­it­ed the Port-of-Spain of­fice yes­ter­day, hop­ing to re­new­ing his pass­port.

Re­spond­ing to these con­cerns, Alexan­der sug­gest­ed that pass­port hold­ers make ap­point­ments to en­sure the best chance of suc­cess in re­new­ing their doc­u­ments.