(Trinidad Express) As State-owned Caribbean Airlines plans to launch its London service tomorrow, it is getting some security help from the United Kingdom Border Agency.
The UK Border Agency yesterday gave CAL equipment to help analyse and detect forged, altered or tampered travel documents like passports.
In a special ceremony at the British High Commission, Elizabeth Street, St Clair, a Border Agency representative (who asked not to be named) presented CAL’s senior manager of security Kurt Gould with a Foster and Freeman eye-D/C1 Document Verification System.
The eye-D/C1 costs approximately £2,000 and at just 15 pounds, is designed for checking standard security features of travel documents in a portable way.
“This is a cooperative agreement between T&T and the UK. For Caribbean Airlines, it’s especially in their interest because if travel documents are discovered to be fraudulent then it’s at the airline’s expense to fly that person back,” said UK High Commissioner Arthur Snell.
Gould said all flights into London, especially during the Olympics, will be scanned.
This will also apply to other international flights.
“This equipment will greatly aid us, even if it may not eradicate the (use of false travel documents),” he said, even though he admitted that there was still more that could be done and more security equipment that could be used to help alleviate illegal situations.
He said the airline was always on the lookout for fraud and narcotics.
He added that there were occurrences of forged documents, especially to the US and Canada, but “not every day”.
