A new scanner installed at the Port of Port-of-Spain will improve efficiency and increase trade levels, Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar said yesterday. Unlike the previous system which examined two containers an hour, the new scanner examines 15 containers an hour. “This scanner will provide for port efficiency, border security and the personal security of the men and women who work hard on the port. “The system can detect illegal contraband and prohibited goods in containers rapidly. “It is mobile and can be relocated for quick deployment and is very effective. This will be functional as we go into the Christmas season,” the Prime Minister said at the commissioning ceremony for the Linear Accelerator X-Ray Scanning and Detection System at Dock Road, Port-of-Spain.
Persad-Bissessar said more scanners would be coming in the future. She added: “We have also had four container scanners being donated by the United States Government. “Those are second-hand and they are being refurbished and we should have those coming in and will roll them out in Tobago and other ports.” The People’s Republic of China provided the scanner under a $25 million grant funding agreement.
Although it had been made available since 2003, Persad-Bissessar said serious work to access the grant began only last year when Chinese President Xi Jinping visited T&T. “The grant funding is not a loan and only recently we discovered it was sitting in our coffers. We do not need to repay the grant funding. I said this was free money in a sense,” she said. The Prime Minister said the container scanner would lead to the reduction of clearance time and “will increase port traffic and competitiveness, better and faster detection of irregularities, increase revenue generation capacity and more modern and efficient use of human resources.” She said her administration was taking a multipartite approach to include not only government, business and labour in the running of the port but also other sectors of society. “In the past we spoke of the tripartite approach, now we are looking at the multipartite approach,” Persad-Bissessar said.
‘Initiatives to modernise the port’
Transport Minister Stephen Cadiz said the challenges on the port did not begin during the tenure of the People’s Partnership but had been around for decades. “We have had many issues, including the infrastructural organisation and human resources but these issues have been around for decades. “It has taken this Government to start the renaissance of the Port of Port-of-Spain,” he said.
Cadiz said several short and medium-term initiatives were planned to modernise the port. “Any commercial port which cannot compete in the world, the work will go elsewhere and when that happens there is a problem. “The only way to solve that is to bring the port up to efficiency, like the replacement of outdated equipment,” he added.
