A flurry of complaints of missing items from barrels and boxes at the Bridgetown Port has prompted its reopening to collection from the port’s Shed 2, Minister of Maritime Affairs and Blue Economy Kirk Humphrey said Wednesday.
For several months, people have been unable to enter the port to collect their barrels due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which exposed shipments from friends and family overseas to pilfering.
But the minister announced an end to door-to-door delivery, requiring addressees to come to Shed 2 to have their barrels scanned and retrieved.
Humphrey said: “Anyone who has a barrel or a box or any personal effects in the Port will be allowed back in the Port to open the boxes and inspect the boxes at that time in the Bridgetown Port. So the idea that a person will be delivering your boxes to your house and that somebody had access to the barrels will be cut out almost immediately.
“You have to come in and present yourself and go through Customs. I must say that Customs has a system where because we scan the barrels, the majority of the barrels are not opened so that we are not going through every single barrel or box.”
Addressees are now being allowed to once again report to the Port to examine their boxes and barrels. It gives them the comfort that they are able to do so, in addition to reducing the risks “of anything happening” after the barrels leave the Port, said Humphrey.
Through an appointment system, between 15 to 20 people will be allowed to go into Customs each hour.
He said: “We want to give this a few weeks and months to work and to review it at the end and to review it to see if the complaints have come down. We have also set up a complaint hotline and we have also set up an email address at complaints@BarbadosPort.com that people can write their complaints to and each and every single complaint will be addressed.
“I feel that we must take full control and full responsibility for people’s personal effects because if we are saying that we have a system whereby the trucker under the instruction of the Port takes the item to your house then our responsibility ends when it gets to your house. And if people are complaining at that point, then somewhere along the system that we implemented there is a need to make some correction. We believe that this system will correct the problem.”
Humphrey also indicated that in an effort to avoid members of the public making their way through the port where activities are taking place, there is a long-term goal to implement a cargo clearing facility where people can examine their barrels and personal items.
The minister said he has asked the management of the Bridgetown Port to track the movement of barrels for the past four months through an artificial intelligence system. He said that the investigation revealed no reason to suspect that suspicious activities took place in any of the barrels.
Said Humphrey: “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 cognizant of the fact that people are legitimately complaining that something has happened to their items by the time the items have reached the house.
“The other thing that we then asked the Port to do is to explain what are the changes that recently occurred in the Bridgetown Port that could lend itself to this kind of level of concern, and there were a few. And so we have been reviewing the processes to make sure that it does not happen again.
“If there is one thing of which I am very certain and very sure is that Barbadians like to go to the Bridgetown Port to inspect their barrels and their boxes when they are opened. In the recent past, due to COVID we had stopped it as a safety measure for the persons at the Port and we implemented a system whereby you would have to go through your agent or your trucker and they would access the Port on your behalf.”
The minister for the Port also noted that he has great respect for the staff at the Bridgetown Port and said it would be difficult for him to associate himself with comments that seem to cast aspirations on the integrity of the workers at the Port.
But he stressed that those complaining about items missing from their barrels are not “mad people” and have legitimate reasons to state their claims. (AH)
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