Barbados Advocate – As concern continues to swell amid recent complaints of missing items from shipments coming out of the Bridgetown Port, Minister of Maritime Affairs and the Blue Economy Kirk Humphrey has announced that there will be changes to the current system of clearing items from the Port, which would be taking effect from as early as Monday.
Noting that the government agency was taking the complaints seriously, the Minister explained that any matter with persons reporting missing goods was indeed a matter of concern for the Port and for him.
Stating that the issue was discussed at all levels in the organisation and plans laid for rectification of the problem, he said he has a lot of respect for the staff and Customs Officers who work at the port.
“It would be very difficult for me to associate myself with any comments that seem to cast aspersions on the integrity of the staff in the Bridgetown Port. However, I also believe that the persons who are complaining about items missing from their barrels – they’re not mad people – and that if they say items have gone missing, then they obviously have a legitimate reason to believe that,” he said.
Going on to say that a decision was taken to examine the changes made in recent times because of the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic that could possibly have led to the level of concern being exhibited, Humphrey said that the Port would be using the technology at its disposal to review the allegations.
“We have an artificial intelligence system, a camera system, that allows us to do that and we were able to track many of the barrels in the Port going back as far as four months and we had no reason to suspect that anything untoward occurred in any of these barrels. In fact, if you get technical, these barrels are so high that it is very difficult for anybody in the Port to access the barrels, but yet I say that cognisant of the fact that people are legitimately complaining that something has happened to their items by the time the items reach the house.”
At present, the system does not allow for members of the public to go to the Port to clear their items in a bid to minimise the possibilities of infection, and as such the public have to secure the services of agents and freighting services to access their goods.
