KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Trav­ellers en­ter­ing and leav­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go will soon be re­quired to com­plete im­mi­gra­tion ar­rival and de­par­ture cards on­line as au­thor­i­ties pre­pare to re­place the long-stand­ing pa­per-based sys­tem used at the coun­try’s ports of en­try.

A no­tice is­sued by the Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion of the Min­istry of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty to stake­hold­ers in­di­cates that the On­line Ar­rival and De­par­ture Card Plat­form is sched­uled to go live on March 17.

Asked for con­fir­ma­tion yes­ter­day, Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Roger Alexan­der said the min­istry will host a press con­fer­ence this morn­ing to pro­vide fur­ther de­tails on the ini­tia­tive.

Alexan­der said of­fi­cials were fi­nal­is­ing sev­er­al mat­ters as the Gov­ern­ment pre­pares to launch the sys­tem. How­ev­er, he did not con­firm spe­cif­ic de­tails, not­ing that these would be ad­dressed dur­ing the brief­ing.

The plat­form is in­tend­ed to mod­ernise the im­mi­gra­tion process by al­low­ing trav­ellers to sub­mit their ar­rival and de­par­ture de­c­la­ra­tions elec­tron­i­cal­ly be­fore trav­el­ling.

Un­der the pro­posed sys­tem, pas­sen­gers will be re­quired to ac­cess the Gov­ern­ment’s por­tal at trav­el.gov.tt, where they must first cre­ate an ac­count us­ing a valid email ad­dress be­fore com­plet­ing the form.

Trav­ellers will al­so be re­quired to up­load a pho­to­graph of the bio­da­ta page of the pass­port they in­tend to use for trav­el.

Ac­cord­ing to the no­tice, the plat­form will be ac­ces­si­ble with­in 72 hours pri­or to ar­rival or de­par­ture, al­low­ing trav­ellers to com­plete the process ahead of their trip. Once the form is sub­mit­ted, users will re­ceive a con­fir­ma­tion email con­tain­ing a dig­i­tal re­ceipt for the ar­rival or de­par­ture card.

The re­ceipt will in­clude the trav­eller’s unique code, name, pass­port and flight in­for­ma­tion, along with a QR code that can be pre­sent­ed to im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cials.

Pas­sen­gers ar­riv­ing in Trinidad and To­ba­go will be able to present the re­ceipt on a mo­bile phone or oth­er elec­tron­ic de­vice, or pro­vide a print­ed copy to im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cers.

If im­ple­ment­ed as in­di­cat­ed, the On­line Ar­rival and De­par­ture Card Plat­form will mark the end of the pa­per-based im­mi­gra­tion forms that trav­ellers have tra­di­tion­al­ly been re­quired to com­plete when en­ter­ing or leav­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Sim­i­lar on­line ar­rival card sys­tems are al­ready in use in sev­er­al Caribbean coun­tries, in­clud­ing An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, St Lu­cia, Do­mini­ca and Grena­da.

Views from cit­i­zens

Kaci Nicholas

“Long over­due. Fill­ing out the im­mi­gra­tion forms is very te­dious. Some­times on the plane they run out of forms, so you end up stand­ing in the line while wait­ing to clear im­mi­gra­tion and try­ing to fill them out. Or you’re on the plane rest­ing and then have to com­plete the forms. It’s out­dat­ed. It’s about time. Guyana and oth­er Caribbean is­lands have al­ready done it. It will make things eas­i­er. I have no is­sue go­ing on­line.”

Zori­da Mo­hammed

“I think it is a good idea be­cause you usu­al­ly have to fill out the form and then go back to your purse to get your pass­port num­ber. This would be eas­i­er.”

Ka­reema Mo­hammed

“I think it is long over­due. That card sys­tem is out­dat­ed. It is much more con­ve­nient to ac­cess every­thing on­line. It will def­i­nite­ly be eas­i­er and faster. I am com­fort­able with an on­line sys­tem.”