It comes as no sur­prise that large quan­ti­ties of stolen ma­te­ri­als were found in con­tain­ers of scrap met­al at the coun­try’s main ports in Point Lisas and Port-of-Spain.

If there were still some cit­i­zens who did not ap­pre­ci­ate the need for the ex­port ban on scrap met­als, these re­cent dis­cov­er­ies should erase any doubts about the de­gree of il­le­gal­i­ty and crim­i­nal col­lab­o­ra­tion in that sec­tor.

With on­ly half of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 100 con­tain­ers un­stuffed and searched so far, law en­force­ment has al­ready re­trieved tonnes of cop­per stolen from TSTT, ma­chin­ery and pumps from en­er­gy sec­tor com­pa­nies and oth­er met­al com­po­nents from a range of com­pa­nies in the pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tors.

This re­cent de­vel­op­ment al­so un­der­scores the need for tighter reg­u­la­tion at the coun­try’s var­i­ous ports of en­try. In re­cent years, raids at cus­toms bonds have ex­posed how eas­i­ly firearms, am­mu­ni­tion and oth­er il­le­gal items are be­ing smug­gled in­to the coun­try, even­tu­al­ly get­ting in­to the hands of crim­i­nals.

There is a very clear link be­tween this il­lic­it ac­tiv­i­ty and the in­crease in gun crimes, es­pe­cial­ly mur­ders, over the past few years.

Large amounts of con­tra­band are get­ting in and out of T&T through the Point Lisas and Port-of-Spain sea­ports, as well as Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port, much too eas­i­ly. More than like­ly, what is in­ter­cept­ed and seized is just the tip of the ice­berg.

So, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert’s an­nounce­ment on Tues­day that ten­ders have been is­sued for the sup­ply, de­liv­ery and in­stal­la­tion of four large-scale mo­bile X-ray sys­tems is on­ly one step, al­beit an im­por­tant one, in the right di­rec­tion.

It will def­i­nite­ly be wel­comed by mem­bers of the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty, who had been rais­ing alarms over the fact that the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion is on­ly able to scan 17 per cent of con­tain­ers at the ports. But there are many more ur­gent mea­sures that must be im­ple­ment­ed.

Bear­ing in mind the speed with which crim­i­nals adapt and in­no­vate to chang­ing con­di­tions, and par­tic­u­lar­ly be­cause T&T is a ma­jor tran­sit point and lu­cra­tive des­ti­na­tion for drugs, guns and am­mu­ni­tion, wildlife, do­mes­tic an­i­mals, fu­el and oth­er types of con­tra­band, much more needs to be done.

In ad­di­tion to the soon-to-be-en­act­ed Scrap Met­al Bill, many more tough laws are need­ed for in­creased de­tec­tion and pros­e­cu­tion, giv­en the con­stant­ly evolv­ing na­ture of transna­tion­al or­gan­ised crime.

For more ef­fec­tive en­force­ment, up­grades to equip­ment and tech­nol­o­gy should be done in tan­dem with the train­ing of cus­toms, im­mi­gra­tion and po­lice of­fi­cers, along­side in­creased bor­der in­tel­li­gence and in­for­ma­tion shar­ing.

Clamp­ing down on il­lic­it im­ports and ex­ports re­quires tighter sur­veil­lance of not on­ly porous seg­ments of T&T’s bor­ders, but le­gal ports. Re­cent events have ex­posed the ex­tent to which crim­i­nals are us­ing var­i­ous means to smug­gle con­tra­band in and out of this coun­try

It is al­so im­por­tant to have more col­lab­o­ra­tion with re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al agen­cies and clos­er work­ing re­la­tion­ships be­tween the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice, In­land Rev­enue, the Chem­istry, Food and Drugs Di­vi­sion, Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion, Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion and oth­er en­force­ment agen­cies.

The bat­tle against T&T’s crim­i­nal gangs and their transna­tion­al as­so­ciates can on­ly be ef­fec­tive if it is waged con­sis­tent­ly and on many fronts.

Scan­ners alone won’t solve that prob­lem.