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Saturday, July 5, 2025

Ports get 4 container scanners

by

2634 days ago
20180419

Vi­o­lent crime, fu­elled by il­le­gal nar­cotics and weapons, has had an ad­verse ef­fect on the land­scape of T&T. How­ev­er, the in­flux of this type of con­tra­band is ex­pect­ed to be ad­dressed with the im­ple­men­ta­tion of four mo­bile con­tain­er scan­ners at two of the coun­try’s ma­jor ports at Point Lisas and Port-of-Spain.

The scan­ners were gift­ed by the US gov­ern­ment at a cost of US$7.2 mil­lion and two of them were un­veiled at the Port of Point Lisas yes­ter­day. Mount­ed on a rugged truck chas­sis, the Mo­bile VACIS sys­tem helps trained op­er­a­tors see the con­tents of closed ve­hi­cles and con­tain­ers and can sup­port a wide va­ri­ety of scan­ning sce­nar­ios.

Speak­ing at the of­fi­cial launch of the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Con­tain­er Scan­ner ini­tia­tive, act­ing Prime Min­is­ter and Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Colm Im­bert said he strong­ly be­lieves the de­ploy­ment of mo­bile scan­ning tech­nol­o­gy will fo­cus on com­bat­ing the im­por­ta­tion of all con­tra­band, specif­i­cal­ly nar­cotics, il­le­gal firearms and am­mu­ni­tion.

He said the ini­tial op­er­a­tor train­ing and main­te­nance op­er­a­tions for the scan­ners was US$2,449,662 and the present three-year main­te­nance con­tract with man­u­fac­tur­ers Lei­dos Cor­po­ra­tion, which took ef­fect from Oc­to­ber 1, 2017 and in­cludes fur­ther op­er­a­tor and im­age analy­sis train­ing, will cost US$1,467,895.

Im­bert said the mo­bile units pro­vide flex­i­bil­i­ty and due to their ver­sa­til­i­ty and small foot­print re­quire­ments, can be used at oth­er lo­ca­tions for spe­cial op­er­a­tions. “They will serve as an ef­fec­tive tool in as­sist­ing the Gov­ern­ment in pro­vid­ing added se­cu­ri­ty to the cit­i­zens of Trinidad and To­ba­go,” Im­bert said.

“The scan­ners are de­signed to de­tect weapons and haz­ardous ma­te­ri­als, com­bat the flow of il­le­gal drugs and in­clud­ing hu­man traf­fick­ing, which is be­com­ing a more se­ri­ous threat every­day.”

Im­bert said the scan­ners will al­so as­sist in rev­enue col­lec­tion as it will give them the abil­i­ty to ver­i­fy man­i­fests of car­go and de­tect un­de­clared car­go. He said he will per­son­al­ly hold the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion re­spon­si­ble should the scan­ners fail to work.

“Make sure it con­tin­ues to work. There’s a ten­den­cy when we launch new things with­in a day it stops work­ing for one rea­son or an­oth­er and I will hold Cus­toms and Ex­cise per­son­al­ly re­spon­si­ble for that. I ex­pect these scan­ners to con­tin­ue work­ing and on­ly be down for main­te­nance and re­pairs,” Im­bert said.

Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan mean­while said there were a few in­fra­struc­tur­al works to be com­plet­ed at the Port of Port-of-Spain but ex­pects the oth­er scan­ners will be up and run­ning by the end of June.

Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion chair­man Ian Ather­ly, in his ad­dress, said there are 200 CCTV cam­eras placed at strate­gic lo­ca­tions at the Port, in­clud­ing ware­hous­es and in­dus­tri­al es­tates. He said some of the cam­eras are al­ready in­te­grat­ed with the na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty in­fra­struc­ture and GPS track­ing tech­nol­o­gy has al­so been in­stalled on the port’s op­er­at­ing equip­ment.


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