DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

With Trinidad and To­ba­go strug­gling to fight the flow of il­le­gal guns and am­mu­ni­tion, large­ly due to its ge­o­graph­i­cal lo­ca­tion and porous bor­ders, the Gov­ern­ment is be­ing ad­vised to re­move over­sight from the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion (C&ED).

A Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee (JSC) of Par­lia­ment made the rec­om­men­da­tion in a re­port laid in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives (HoR) yes­ter­day.

Chaired by Port-of-Spain South MP Kei­th Scot­land, the com­mit­tee in­quired in­to the safe­ty, se­cu­ri­ty and pro­tec­tion of cit­i­zens with spe­cif­ic ref­er­ence to the fac­tors that con­tribute to the preva­lence of il­le­gal firearms and gun vi­o­lence in T&T.

The 164-page doc­u­ment high­light­ed the low suc­cess rate Cus­toms and the Coast Guard have had in stem­ming the flow of il­le­gal firearms in­to the coun­try. It al­so pin­point­ed the Po­lice Ser­vice’s (TTPS) fail­ure to put a sig­nif­i­cant dent in the cir­cu­la­tion of il­le­gal items across the coun­try.

As a so­lu­tion, the JSC rec­om­mend­ed the cre­ation of a Bor­der Pro­tec­tion and Se­cu­ri­ty Agency (BP­SA) to sep­a­rate the bor­der se­cu­ri­ty func­tion from the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion and the in­sti­tu­tion­al strength­en­ing of the TTPS.

The re­port said the firearms in­dus­try in T&T as “lu­cra­tive”, not­ing a sin­gle firearm went for an av­er­age of TT$17,429 on the black mar­ket.

Not­ing, T&T does not man­u­fac­ture guns or am­mu­ni­tion, the JSC fo­cused on ports of en­try which Cus­toms and the Coast Guard should be mon­i­tor­ing. It said in 2021 and 2022, the Coast Guard did not seize a sin­gle weapon or am­mu­ni­tion.

The JSC said ac­cord­ing to sub­mis­sions from the Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency (SSA), there are 123 il­le­gal ports in T&T, of which 66 fa­cil­i­tate the en­try or ex­it of il­le­gal firearms and am­mu­ni­tion, while there are nine le­gal ports of en­try.

How­ev­er, the JSC said, “Traf­fick­ers mov­ing arms by freight use dif­fer­ent tech­niques for con­ceal­ing their iden­ti­ty and il­lic­it car­go. This in­cludes adopt­ing fic­ti­tious or in­ter­me­di­ary ad­dress­es, fake pa­per­work like misiden­ti­fy­ing the arms as ob­jects of sim­i­lar shape and den­si­ty (met­al tools, en­gine parts, etc.), as well as un­der­valu­ing the goods,” the re­port said.

“Cer­tain­ly, traf­fick­ers are al­so aid­ed by cor­rupt per­son­nel who fa­cil­i­tate ac­tiv­i­ties. Ac­cord­ing to the Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency (SSA) as­sess­ment, cor­rupt law en­force­ment per­son­nel have been un­cov­ered at all law en­force­ment or­gan­i­sa­tions.”

It said this is com­pound­ed by sig­nif­i­cant­ly low re­sources at the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion.

“Staffing num­bers of 352 per­son­nel out of an an­ti­quat­ed man­date of 700 is in­ad­e­quate and re­quires im­me­di­ate ac­tion to strength­en the hu­man re­source ca­pac­i­ty of the Di­vi­sion,” the re­port said.

“In re­al words, a short­age of more than 50% of per­son­nel need­ed to ful­fil its man­date with sat­is­fac­tion is more a staffing cri­sis.”

As for equip­ment, when they ap­peared be­fore the JSC in 2022, Cus­toms re­vealed that its fleet of mo­bile VACIS Non-in­tru­sive X-Ray In­spec­tion Sys­tems were deemed “not fit for pur­pose” based on an In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank Non-In­tru­sive In­spec­tion Needs Re­port and could not be up­grad­ed.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, it said with just four fixed scan­ners in op­er­a­tion – two at Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port, one at the Port of Port-of-Spain and one at the ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port – con­tain­ers were be­ing checked pri­mar­i­ly through phys­i­cal ex­am­i­na­tion and much like the Coast Guard, dis­cov­er­ies were slim to none.

“In 2021 and 2022, no sin­gle firearm was dis­cov­ered dur­ing the con­tain­ers’ scan­ning process. In­deed, the sev­en dis­cov­er­ies of firearms in 2021 and 2022 were dis­cov­ered through the phys­i­cal ex­am­i­na­tion of car­go. The lat­est was dis­cov­ered on the Oc­to­ber 14, 2022, at the Med­way Tran­sit Shed. In 2022 on­ly, firearms were dis­cov­ered on five oc­ca­sions, all of them in bond­ed ware­hous­es in Port-of-Spain or Point Lisas,” it said.

To mit­i­gate these chal­lenges, the JSC hopes the cre­ation of the BP­SA un­der the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty (MNS), will al­low Cus­toms to fo­cus on rev­enue col­lec­tion, the ap­pli­ca­tion of trade pol­i­cy and col­lect­ing and dis­sem­i­nat­ing ac­cu­rate trade-re­lat­ed da­ta.

The BP­SA, mean­while, will thus con­duct spe­cialised screen­ing, ex­am­ine and in­spect re­ceived bar­rels, con­tain­ers, box­es, et cetera, for il­lic­it car­go; in­ter­cept il­lic­it items and/or peo­ple at any na­tion­al lo­ca­tion up­on in­tel­li­gence re­ceived from the SSA, TTCG or oth­er re­lat­ed en­ti­ty; and col­lab­o­rate with rel­e­vant law en­force­ment agen­cies on the de­vel­op­ment of strate­gies geared to­wards the in­ter­cep­tion, re­trieval and de­struc­tion of con­tra­band, and the charg­ing and ar­rest of per­sons in­volved.

It sug­gests a com­mis­sion­er, who will re­port to the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, head the unit.

Cus­toms has al­so been asked to un­der­take a fierce re­cruit­ment dri­ve to meet its de­mands, be­gin­ning with 100 of­fi­cers per year for at least the next five years.

Con­sid­er­ing the on­go­ing threat of cor­rup­tion to bor­der se­cu­ri­ty, the re­port ad­vised that agents un­der each iden­ti­fied agency un­der­go reg­u­lar poly­graph test­ing and back­ground checks.

An­oth­er rec­om­men­da­tion is for the Prime Min­is­ter to im­me­di­ate­ly es­tab­lish a Po­lice In­spec­torate, which was ini­tial­ly rec­om­mend­ed in the 2017 Man­pow­er Au­dit Re­port.