Prime Minster Allen Chastanet. * File photo
(CARIBBEAN NEWS NOW) — In an apparent attempt to denigrate the Saint Lucia Civil Service Association (CSA) for its resistance to the government’s plan to establish a new border control agency, Saint Lucia Prime Minister Allen Chastanet has, by accident or design, exposed deplorable working conditions, infrastructure, organisational layout and multiple security loopholes at the Hewanorra international airport (HIA) and, by extension, the country as a whole.
In a somewhat agitated appearance at a press conference last week, the prime minister announced an abrupt about-face to previous denials of the existence of a Cabinet conclusion that authorised the “establishment of the Saint Lucia Border Management Authority as a Statutory Corporation”, which he and other government ministers had previously stated did not exist in the first place, claiming that he “misspoke”.
“Of course I would say I misspoke,” Chastanet said in announcing the revocation of the previously nonexistent Cabinet Conclusion 247 of 16th April 2018.
After vigorous pushback from the CSA and two days of ‘sick-out’ by Customs officers, in a testy exchange with local reporters Chastanet doubled down on the setting up of the controversial border control unit.
The border control will go ahead despite the drawbacks and the final decision rests with government technocrats, he asserted.
“So everybody was focused on the first line [of the Cabinet conclusion] that it is going to be a statutory agency but nobody took the time to read the rest of the memo in which clearly it outlined what government intent is. So the decision to rescind the Cabinet conclusion in no way means that my government has abandoned the idea at all of introducing a border control,” Chastanet said.
He nevertheless admitted that “it is to take the pressure off” in what seems a strategic pause, buying time, and awaiting a report from the new border control review team in December, as announced in a subsequent government press release, which stated, “The Cabinet of ministers… has appointed a team to undertake extensive and in depth dialogue on the establishment a single border control management entity.”
On August 20, in a written response to Claude Paul, general secretary of the CSA, attempting to address “concerns about the Border Control Management Authority”, Chastanet said:
“Your members’ overwhelming rejection of the notion of creating a Statutory Corporation for the intended purpose is duly noted.
“However, I wish to remind you and your members that the authority and responsibility of making policy decision are within the remit of the government. Accordingly, my government rejects any attempts by the CSA of its members to overstep your remit in attempting to assume responsibility for making decision for the Cabinet of Ministers.”
The government had previously announced that the goal of the proposed new border control agency was to integrate immigration, customs, quarantine and the marine police to strengthen Saint Lucia’s borders.
Nevertheless, the CSA has expressed its ongoing lack of trust in the prime minister and its concern for job security and benefits for customs and immigration officers, contrary to Chastanet’s repeated pronouncements that “jobs will not be lost and the unit will remain under the control of the public service.”
However, in his apparently unscripted haste to resile from what may have been “misspoken” or “miswritten”, Chastanet wittingly or unwitting put national security at increased risk by disclosing longstanding failings in this exchange with local journalist Miguel Fevrier at a Cabinet press briefing:
PM: For over three years there has been no computer system working at the airport. It may even been longer than three years.
Fevrier: So what’s wrong with…
PM (interrupting): The company went out of business. Where was the outcry? Where was people’s concern? Where was the CSA at that point, saying, “Hey, immigration can’t do their job because there’s no software?”
Fevrier: So how have they performed over the last three years?
PM: Guess what the security system is. You come into the airport, they look at the passport, they look at you, they look at the passport, they flip the pages to see where you’re been traveling, they look back at the passport.
And then there’s been a dependence now on those immigration cards that you have, okay, if you wanna see the pictures, if you didn’t take them yourself. But I have made mention many times of when you go into the airport on the left hand side of where the immigration office is that’s where all the cards were being kept.
And you would go in there and the place stunk of ink and there was cockroaches and rats and everything else because of the accumulation of paper. And it became farcical because even the filing system they have, which was none, so what was the point of keeping it in the first place?
Where was the CSA’s voice?
Chastanet’s remarks appear to confirm that, in its 26 months in office out of the 36 months mentioned, his administration has done nothing to correct the safety and security failings of which he was seemingly well aware.
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