Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Colm Im­bert says two new mo­bile scan­ners for the Port of Port-of-Spain will be de­liv­ered by next month and be­come op­er­a­tional with­in one month.

He al­so re­vealed that the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion’s de­lays in start­ing pro­cure­ment process­es for a dam­aged scan­ner will be the sub­ject of a full in­ves­ti­ga­tion. He made the an­nounce­ments in the Sen­ate yes­ter­day while re­spond­ing to ques­tions from In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Paul Richards.

Richards asked whether the scan­ners and CCTV cam­eras at the Port of Port-of-Spain’s Con­tain­er Ex­am­i­na­tion Sta­tion (CES) were op­er­a­tional and what the sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenges are in re­la­tion to the equip­ment used for the sur­veil­lance/scan­ning of con­tain­ers and goods im­port­ed. Im­bert de­tailed sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenges for the lat­ter.

How­ev­er, he said, the CCTV cam­eras at the CES are ful­ly op­er­a­tional. Im­bert al­so said four mo­bile scan­ners are be­ing ob­tained—two for the Port of Port-of-Spain and two for the Port of Point Lisas. He said two scan­ners would be com­mis­sioned for the Port of PoS short­ly to en­hance the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion’s ca­pa­bil­i­ty to sig­nif­i­cant­ly scan more con­tain­ers.

“The man­u­fac­tur­ers in­di­cat­ed that the two mo­bile scan­ners will be de­liv­ered by Au­gust 2024 and be op­er­a­tional with­in one month. As of (Mon­day), the Fac­to­ry Ac­cep­tance Test for these two new mo­bile scan­ners was suc­cess­ful­ly con­duct­ed in France over June 20 to 21, 2024. These scan­ners were card­ed for ship­ment to T&T on Mon­day. We’re cur­rent­ly await­ing con­fir­ma­tion of the ship­ping from the agent,” Im­bert added.

He said the CES pal­let scan­ner was al­most 20 years old, cur­rent­ly non-op­er­a­tional, and has been for ten years. An ac­cel­er­at­ed pro­cure­ment process is in progress to ac­quire mod­ern fit-for-pur­pose pal­let scan­ners us­ing the lat­est tech­nol­o­gy. These will be pur­chased in the near fu­ture.

Im­bert said oth­er scan­ners in the CES work in­ter­mit­tent­ly, and have to be re­paired fre­quent­ly “as they’re some­how eas­i­ly dam­aged by er­rant fork­lifts. I think the sen­a­tor knows what I’m talk­ing about.”

Richards said Cus­toms of­fi­cers at a Par­lia­ment Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee (Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty) meet­ing ad­mit­ted tar­di­ness and some lev­el of in­com­pe­tence in start­ing pro­cure­ment process­es for a scan­ner that was dam­aged, and now he not­ed Im­bert said the pal­let scan­ner is ten years non-op­er­a­tional.

Richards asked, “Can you in­di­cate if this lev­el of in­com­pe­tence tra­vers­es to dere­lic­tion of du­ty or aid­ing and abet­ting crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty?”

Im­bert re­spond­ed, “If you’re ask­ing me to de­ter­mine if it’s de­lib­er­ate and whether it’s part of some or­gan­ised op­er­a­tion, I’m not com­pe­tent to an­swer that. Your guess is as good as mine.”

Richards ques­tioned if this “dis­turb­ing, in­ter­mit­tent, and cu­ri­ous dam­age” to scan­ners and the tar­di­ness in procur­ing new scan­ners is se­vere­ly im­pact­ing the abil­i­ty to in­ter­cept con­tra­band, in­clud­ing il­le­gal guns and am­mu­ni­tion. Im­bert replied, “Cer­tain­ly, if the equip­ment was ful­ly func­tion­al and was not so of­ten and eas­i­ly dam­aged and the pro­cure­ment wasn’t de­layed in the way it has been de­layed for un­known rea­sons by the pub­lic ser­vants and of­fi­cers in­volved, cer­tain­ly the Di­vi­sion would be bet­ter equipped to de­ter­mine and de­tect con­tra­band.”

Oth­er chal­lenges at the port the Fi­nance Min­is­ter said, in­clude lim­it­ed trained per­son­nel. He said 24 of­fi­cers cur­rent­ly be­ing trained for scan­ning op­er­a­tions will be as­signed to op­er­ate the new­ly pur­chased four mo­bile scan­ners, as well as the pal­let scan­ners that will be pur­chased. An­oth­er chal­lenge is re­stric­tions on the en­er­gy lev­els of the scan­ner.

Im­bert said, “The use of very high en­er­gy scan­ners at the Port of Port-of-Spain is in­ap­pro­pri­ate due to the ex­ces­sive pow­er utilised and there­fore may not be em­ployed. There are some of the con­cerns which arise from the port’s close prox­im­i­ty to com­mer­cial and res­i­den­tial premis­es.”