Joshua Seemu­n­gal

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

joshua.seemu­n­gal@guardian.co.tt

In the face of wide­spread pub­lic con­cern over the coun­try’s crime rate, Cus­toms and Ex­cise (C&E) Di­vi­sion sources are con­cerned that a staff short­age is af­fect­ing their abil­i­ty to de­tect il­le­gal weapons and drugs.

The Pub­lic Ser­vice As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) said there were 260 va­can­cies out of 693 po­si­tions in the di­vi­sion—a 37.5 per cent va­can­cy rate—in late 2019. There were 162 va­can­cies out of 333 po­si­tions for cus­toms and ex­cise of­fi­cers for grades I and II.

The nine most se­nior po­si­tions in the di­vi­sion—guard su­per­vi­sor, train­ing of­fi­cer, su­per­vi­sor, train­ing su­per­vi­sor, pre­ven­ta­tive in­spec­tor, col­lec­tor, as­sis­tant comp­trol­ler, deputy comp­trol­ler and comp­trol­ler—had a list­ed va­can­cy rate of 100 per cent (act­ing roles were pre­sum­ably not count­ed as filled po­si­tions).

The PSA told Guardian Me­dia that there may be even more va­can­cies now, as em­ploy­ees left dur­ing the 2019 to 2023 pe­ri­od.

Claims by sources and the PSA that there is a lack of staff at the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion were sup­port­ed by notes to ac­counts in the 2022 Au­di­tor Gen­er­al’s re­port.

$27.9 mil­lion was al­lo­cat­ed in fis­cal 2022 to hire and pay new staff but that was not spent. The Au­di­tor Gen­er­al’s re­port stat­ed, “An in­take of cus­toms and ex­cise of­fi­cers and guards was an­tic­i­pat­ed. How­ev­er, up to 30.9.22 (the date), on­ly a few C&GIs as­sumed du­ty, not to men­tion the ad­ver­tise­ment for Guards has not been fi­nalised and ad­ver­tised by the Ser­vice Com­mis­sions De­part­ment.”

Ac­cord­ing to the re­port, $118.7 mil­lion went to­ward per­son­nel ex­pen­di­ture at the di­vi­sion in 2022, as com­pared to $123.6 mil­lion in 2021—a de­crease of $4.9 mil­lion. Salaries and CO­LA at the di­vi­sion in 2021 and 2022 ac­count­ed for $124.5 mil­lion. Costs as­so­ci­at­ed with con­tract em­ploy­ment in­creased from $970,000 in 2021 to $1.05 mil­lion in 2022, while short-term em­ploy­ment ac­count­ed for $4.58 mil­lion over­all in both years. Com­par­a­tive­ly, the min­istry paid out $43.4 mil­lion in over­time in 2021 and an­oth­er $40.9 mil­lion in 2022. Jan­i­to­r­i­al ser­vices cost $4.15 mil­lion over­all in both years.

Guardian Me­dia re­quest­ed the num­ber of va­can­cies at the di­vi­sion with the line min­istry—the Min­istry of Fi­nance—and with Act­ing Cus­toms Comp­trol­ler Yas­min Har­ris but did not re­ceive a re­sponse.

Cus­toms sources al­so com­plained that salaries are rel­a­tive­ly low, in­creas­ing the like­li­hood of some ju­nior of­fi­cers ac­cept­ing bribes.

The cur­rent salaries of the di­vi­sion’s em­ploy­ees range from $6,017 per month for some ju­nior cus­toms of­fi­cers to $30,340 per month for the most se­nior per­son—the comp­trol­ler.

The low­est rank of C&E guard earns $6,370 per month, while the high­est rank of C&E guard earns $8,853.

A cus­toms of­fi­cer earns be­tween $6,017 to $7,664 a month. The most se­nior cus­toms of­fi­cer, a cus­toms of­fi­cer III, earns $10,770. Train­ing of­fi­cers and su­per­vi­sors earn $11,655, while in­spec­tors and col­lec­tors earn $12,275.

The Gov­ern­ment has of­fered a salary in­crease of four per cent for the ne­go­ti­at­ing pe­ri­ods: 2014 to 2017, as well as from 2017 to 2020 but PSA pres­i­dent Leroy Bap­tiste has re­ject­ed the of­fer.

Im­bert promis­es ad­di­tion­al re­sources for crime fight

As the Gov­ern­ment moves ahead to roll out the Trinidad and To­ba­go Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty in fis­cal 2023, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert said ad­di­tion­al re­sources would be ded­i­cat­ed to the crime fight. He said a $90 mil­lion con­tract was award­ed for four large-scale scan­ners at the ports of Port of Port-of-Spain and Port of Point Lisas for 2024. In ad­di­tion, 16 hand-held scan­ners were be­ing ac­quired.

How­ev­er, ac­cord­ing to the cus­toms sources, while new scan­ners may help, a staff short­age al­so needs to be ad­dressed.

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds had said there are ap­prox­i­mate­ly 12,000 il­le­gal firearms in the coun­try, while for­mer act­ing po­lice com­mis­sion­er Mc­Don­ald Ja­cob had linked the high num­ber of homi­cides to il­le­gal firearms com­ing through the coun­try’s le­gal ports of en­try.

“We do the work di­rect­ly with the Unit­ed States’ Bu­reau of Al­co­hol, To­bac­co, Firearms and Ex­plo­sives (ATF) and in some in­stances, we have per­sons in Geor­gia and oth­er places who are ar­rest­ed, who are re­spon­si­ble for send­ing firearms to Trinidad. We will do the in­tel­li­gence and we’ll see some of the links to per­sons in Trinidad. So, our ports and our air­ports and oth­er places are, in fact, com­pro­mised,” Ja­cob said in a me­dia in­ter­view in Au­gust 2022.

Be­fore a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee hear­ing on Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty in No­vem­ber 2022, then-act­ing comp­trol­ler Vidyah Mar­cial al­so ac­knowl­edged there were ma­jor staff is­sues fac­ing the di­vi­sion.

“The trained staff is now be­com­ing de­plet­ed and the units es­tab­lished for the crime-fight­ing and in­ter­dic­tion are very small in num­bers. Most of those units op­er­ate on a 24-7 ba­sis. So that on a shift, if it’s the ma­rine in­ter­dic­tion unit, you need at least six to eight per­sons, present­ly we on­ly have two to three peo­ple. I can­not send out two to three mem­bers of staff out at sea. That is a risk,” she told the com­mit­tee when it asked about the di­vi­sion’s in­abil­i­ty to de­tect il­le­gal guns com­ing in at the ports.

An unim­pressed com­mit­tee mem­ber, Min­is­ter of Tourism, Cul­ture and the Arts Ran­dall Mitchell in­sist­ed the onus falls on the di­vi­sion to make rec­om­men­da­tions to fill va­can­cies. Re­spond­ing to the min­is­ter’s claims then-act­ing deputy comp­trol­ler Yas­min Har­ris, now act­ing comp­trol­ler, backed up Mar­cial’s claims.

“We have suf­fered mul­ti­ple loss­es—staff at­tri­tion, where the staff was not re­placed. From 2008 to 2022, our staff, we have suf­fered tremen­dous staff at­tri­tion. So, it is not the di­vi­sion. The di­vi­sion can on­ly make—as a di­vi­sion in the pub­lic ser­vice—we can on­ly make rec­om­men­da­tions for the fill­ing of va­can­cies and the ap­point­ment of of­fi­cers, and I can as­sure you rec­om­men­da­tions have been made by mul­ti­ple comp­trol­lers for the fill­ing of such posts,” Har­ris said.

De­spite all the va­can­cies, the coun­try’s ports are busy.

The Port Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go stat­ed that as of Au­gust 2023, 43,504 con­tain­ers were im­port­ed at the Port-of-Spain port. Con­verse­ly, 15,161 con­tain­ers were ex­port­ed.

Ac­cord­ing to Bud­get 2024 doc­u­ments, the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion gen­er­at­ed around $3.6 bil­lion in rev­enue in 2022, as com­pared to $3.3 bil­lion in 2022. In fis­cal 2022, the min­istry earned $58.7 bil­lion but spent $58.9 bil­lion. The ex­pen­di­ture al­lo­ca­tion for all fi­nance min­istry staff costs for fis­cal 2024 was $539.8 mil­lion. In fis­cal 2023, the min­istry spent $452.9 mil­lion on staff. In fis­cal 2022, $427.8 mil­lion and in fis­cal 2021, $439.4 mil­lion.

Re­ports from the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al for 2021 and 2022 al­so re­ferred to the scan­ners at the ports. Ac­cord­ing to the 2021 re­port, $46 mil­lion was al­lo­cat­ed for that fis­cal year to re­pair and main­tain the scan­ners do­nat­ed by the Unit­ed States Gov­ern­ment, but a re­view de­ter­mined it was im­prac­ti­cal, so the mon­ey was not spent.

“The main­te­nance con­tract for mo­bile scan­ners do­nat­ed by the USA af­ter care­ful re­view by PBS Tech­nolo­gies was found to be old and out­dat­ed, mak­ing it im­prac­ti­cal to re­pair and main­tain. A pro­pos­al was made to pur­chase new ones to re­place ex­ist­ing old ones in the Fi­nan­cial year 2022,” the re­port stat­ed. How­ev­er, ac­cord­ing to the 2022 Au­di­tor Gen­er­al’s re­port, at­tempts to pur­chase the new scan­ners failed. $52.39 mil­lion was al­lo­cat­ed to pur­chase the scan­ners—a crit­i­cal tool in de­tect­ing the im­port of il­le­gal weapons and drugs—in 2022, but it was not spent.

“The spec­i­fi­ca­tions of the scan­ners for the Re­quest for Pro­pos­al were not fi­nalised,” a note to the ac­counts stat­ed. Two years lat­er, Im­bert an­nounced at the 2024 Bud­get that four new scan­ners would be ready at the Port of Port-of-Spain and Port of Point Lisas by 2024.