PIARCO CHAOS

Passengers waiting to clear Immigration and persons awaiting on them in the arrival areas, stood for several hours while others sat on suitcases, chairs or in some cases, on the floor.

A passenger arriving from Toronto, Canada aboard Air Canada on Thursday, told Newsday he spent five hours trying to clear Immigration as there were only two officers at the booths to deal with the influx of passengers.

“I spent almost as much time in your airport than I spent in the air reaching here from Canada. This is not a nice way to start my Trinidad Carnival experience,” the passenger said. The passenger, who asked not to be named said the majority of persons waiting to be cleared, were tourists. “There were huge arrivals with the majority being tourists coming for your Carnival.” Passengers arriving, he added, “became angry, frustrated and hungry. The situation was very chaotic and people jostled to get to the front of the line.” Another passenger, who contacted Newsday to highlight the issue, said he felt very embarrassed to be a Trini and hear the anger among the tourists. “It was very embarrassing to come home to our an international airport with guests, to be treated in this manner.” Among flights that landed between 3.10 pm and 6 pm were Air Canada from Toronto, JetBlue from Fort Lauderdale, Copa Airlines from Panama City, Jet Blue from New York, Avianca from Panama City, Aero Mexico from Panama City, British Airways from St Lucia, Iberia from St Lucia and Caribbean Airlines (CAL) from St Vincent.

Contacted on the situation, Nigel Ferguson, Chairman of the board of directors of the Airports Authority (AATT) said he has “absolutely no jurisdiction on what Immigration or Customs should or should not do.” The airports authority, he said, merely provides the facilities for Immigration to carry out their work.

Ferguson said that social media reports of angry visitors walking out of Customs without their luggage being checked were false. He said that the problems at Immigration were not new. “We have had meetings with Immigration and pleaded with them to improve the situation.” Newsday spoke with other airport officials who confirmed the chaos but referred this reported to Acting Chief Immigration Officer Charmaine Gandhi- Andrews for further comment.

Efforts to reach Gandhi-Andrews for comment yesterday proved futile.

Calls to the two deputy chief immigration officers, the Assistant Chief Immigration Officer and the immigration offices at the North Terminal and South Terminal of the Piarco International Airport, all went unanswered. National Security Minister Edmund Dillon, under whose portfolio the Immigration Department falls, also could not be reached for comment.

Video images of the chaos at the airport were uploaded to social media. “Two officers working...

over 4 hours just to get through Immigration!!! Nah!!! Piarco and the Ministry of Tourism (sic) get a plan during Carnival time do better than this please!!! Please!!!” a Facebook user wrote in a post linked to the video images.