Tightening up is required at the borders of St. Vincent and the Grenadines in order to mitigate the issue of the importation of illegal firearms.
This was stated by Prime Minister Gonsalves during a call to WE FM’s Issue At Hand Program, where he noted that persons have been using various methods of getting these firearms through the ports, including boxes, barrels and vehicles.
“We need to tighten up further at our border points, through customs and the airports in relation to the detection of firearms. We’ve detected and seized a lot of firearms, coming in but clearly some come in through the normal port system and we have an order—the scanners, additional facilities to make sure that we can scan containers and scan boxes and the like.
But you know people bring—we have found at the port people bring guns inside of their boxes, and all kind of other places and motorcars.” He said.
The Prime Minister said that this is an effort that must be intelligence led, but noted that St. Vincent and the Grenadines lacks the facilities that allow for measures such as electronic surveillance.