PM: US helping T&T identify threats with advanced passenger screening

Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

[email protected]

The Unit­ed States is as­sist­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go with the de­vel­op­ment of in­fra­struc­ture to com­ple­ment an ad­vanced pas­sen­ger screen­ing sys­tem that will al­low au­thor­i­ties to iden­ti­fy po­ten­tial threats even be­fore trav­ellers ar­rive in the coun­try.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar made the an­nounce­ment yes­ter­day fol­low­ing Eid-ul-Fitr cel­e­bra­tions at the Marakaz-Al-AS­JA Ja­maat, as she out­lined new and on­go­ing ini­tia­tives in the Gov­ern­ment’s crime-fight­ing strat­e­gy.

Ac­cord­ing to the Prime Min­is­ter, the sys­tem will be sup­port­ed through US col­lab­o­ra­tion and will work along­side new on­line en­try re­quire­ments cur­rent­ly be­ing im­ple­ment­ed at the na­tion’s air­ports.

“We con­tin­ue to en­gage the US au­thor­i­ties in many fields, a very im­por­tant one is what is hap­pen­ing at our air­ports now with the on­line en­try forms,” she said.

She re­vealed that the Gov­ern­ment is prepar­ing to in­tro­duce leg­is­la­tion for the Ad­vanced Pas­sen­ger In­for­ma­tion Sys­tem (APIS), which will sig­nif­i­cant­ly en­hance bor­der se­cu­ri­ty by al­low­ing of­fi­cials to vet pas­sen­gers be­fore they land.

“By next week, Fri­day or there­after, we’ll bring a piece of law, the APIS leg­is­la­tion. When we link these to­geth­er, even be­fore you land, we can have a clear idea whether there’s a good guy or a bad guy, to put it sim­ply, land­ing here.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the ini­tia­tive forms part of a broad­er push to mod­ernise na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty in­fra­struc­ture, with in­ter­na­tion­al co­op­er­a­tion play­ing a key role.

Re­cent­ly, the Min­istry of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs not­ed that as of March 17, trav­ellers en­ter­ing and leav­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go will be able 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.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so de­fend­ed the Gov­ern­ment’s con­tin­ued use of a State of Emer­gency (SoE), not­ing that while progress has been made, more work is need­ed to fur­ther re­duce crime.

“We have seen crime at the low­est it has been in many, many years. The mur­ders have been down by 42 per cent. Peo­ple are say­ing, why an­oth­er SoE? Be­cause on­ly 42 per cent down, we have to work to bring it down fur­ther.”

The Prime Min­is­ter added that sev­er­al an­ti-crime mea­sures are al­ready show­ing re­sults, but stressed that au­thor­i­ties re­main com­mit­ted to dri­ving down crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty even more.

The Prime Min­is­ter al­so added that the Unit­ed States-op­er­at­ed radar sys­tem, once based in To­ba­go, “did serve us well,” as she ad­dressed con­cerns sur­round­ing its re­cent re­moval.

She not­ed that while the radar had been ben­e­fi­cial to Trinidad and To­ba­go, its re­moval was un­der­stand­able giv­en shift­ing pri­or­i­ties by US au­thor­i­ties.

“We were lucky to have it the time we had it. They need it for their own use, as you know. They’re on an­oth­er front, and they prob­a­bly need it for that pur­pose. But it did serve us well, and we thank them very much for it,” she said. On Feb­ru­ary 27, speak­ing out­side the Red House, the Prime Min­is­ter re­vealed that the radar cost US$3 mil­lion per day.

She said the Unit­ed States, not the T&T Gov­ern­ment, was foot­ing the bill.

“You know they are pay­ing US$3 mil­lion a day for that radar? Not us. They are pay­ing that,” she said.

She ex­plained that be­cause the US was in­vest­ing such a high amount in­to the op­er­a­tion, which re­port­ed­ly in­clud­ed salaries, ac­com­mo­da­tion and main­te­nance, they kept their own mil­i­tary per­son­nel on-site to en­sure the equip­ment’s se­cu­ri­ty and pre­vent sab­o­tage.

Guardian Me­dia asked the Prime Min­is­ter yes­ter­day if the coun­try had to pay for the use of the radar or if the US was pay­ing T&T to use its space, but she on­ly re­spond­ed, “No.”

Re­cent­ly, the Op­po­si­tion Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) raised con­cerns over what it de­scribed as a trou­bling lack of trans­paren­cy over the Gov­ern­ment’s han­dling of the US mil­i­tary radar, which was in­stalled in To­ba­go last year.

PNM deputy po­lit­i­cal leader San­jiv Bood­hu ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of hid­ing de­tails sur­round­ing both the im­ple­men­ta­tion and re­moval of the radar from the ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port site, stat­ing that the coun­try con­tin­ues to be left in the dark over whether the radar was an as­set to T&T or not.