US assisting TT with advanced passenger screening system

Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

[email protected]

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar said Gov­ern­ment is mov­ing to strength­en bor­der se­cu­ri­ty through new on­line en­try sys­tems and leg­is­la­tion to sup­port the Ad­vanced Pas­sen­ger In­for­ma­tion Sys­tem (APIS).

She spoke on Sat­ur­day af­ter Eid-ul-Fitr cel­e­bra­tions at the Marakaz-Al-AS­JA Ja­maat in Char­lieville, out­lin­ing clos­er col­lab­o­ra­tion with Unit­ed States au­thor­i­ties on air­port screen­ing.

She said Trinidad and To­ba­go con­tin­ues to work with US au­thor­i­ties on se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures, in­clud­ing sys­tems to strength­en bor­der con­trol.

“A very im­por­tant one is what is hap­pen­ing at our air­ports now with the on­line en­try forms.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the sys­tem will al­low au­thor­i­ties to as­sess pas­sen­gers be­fore ar­rival.

“A very im­por­tant one is what is hap­pen­ing now at our air­ports with the on­line en­try forms and so on Tied with that we are go­ing to get some help from the US to put in­to place ways, from when you land by that point we will have on­line in­for­ma­tion which the US agreed to help us with so that we can know the good guys who com­ing in, the bad ones com­ing in.”

She said leg­is­la­tion is be­ing pre­pared to for­malise the use of APIS, which re­lies on pas­sen­ger da­ta and in­tel­li­gence-shar­ing to flag po­ten­tial threats.

The Prime Min­is­ter said the ini­tia­tive forms part of wider se­cu­ri­ty co­op­er­a­tion with US au­thor­i­ties, aimed at im­prov­ing mon­i­tor­ing at the coun­try’s bor­ders.

She al­so de­fend­ed the Gov­ern­ment’s broad­er crime strat­e­gy, in­clud­ing the on­go­ing State of Emer­gency, point­ing to a re­duc­tion in mur­ders.

“We con­tin­ue in the fight against crime. We have sev­er­al ini­tia­tives. Some have al­ready borne fruit. We have seen crime at the low­est it has been in many, many years. The mur­ders have been down by 42%. Let’s not for­get that.”