Airport delays set to continue amid Customs confusion - claim
Passengers will continue to be delayed as they leave Bermuda International Airport due to confusion over the new combined services of Customs and Immigration staff, a worker has claimed.
A Customs officer, who did not wish to be named, said queues would continue to build up at the Immigration desk as Customs officers undergo on-the-job training for their new all-encompassing role.
The officer spoke out after passengers claimed in The Royal Gazette yesterday that they had suffered delays after flying into the Island in recent weeks.
They said they faced long queues at the Immigration desk, Customs duty payment counter, and then at Customs inspection - on one occasion it took one man 90 minutes to reach the taxi stand.
The airport aims to get everyone through within 40 minutes.
But the Customs officer said the delays were due to the combining of the services at the end of January this year.
And the officer said some staff were unhappy about the changes.
"A lot of people are afraid to speak out, but they are upset about what has happened," the officer said.
"Management is basically expecting Customs officers to carry out the specialised tasks of the Immigration officers, and obviously it is going to take time.
"The Immigration desk is not going to run as efficiently as it was for some time. There are a lot of Customs staff who have to learn that function. They are being trained on a rotation system, a month at a time.
"There is a lot of work involved and it is not necessarily something everyone can easily pick up. It's causing problems for staff, but the passengers are being inconvenienced and are suffering."
And the officer said more time should have been given to preparation.
"Customs were not ready to take on the Immigration role at all. If they wanted to combine the services, they should have phased it in through attrition, rather than forcing Immigration Officers off the desk.
"The services were apparently combined to make the process more efficient. But some of us don't see how that is going to happen."
But last night, Collector of Customs Winifred Fostine-DeSilva said she accepted that there may have been a few teething problems once the change kicked in, but said she could assure everyone that the combining of services would make the whole process quicker and more efficient for everyone.
She said: "I have just received an e-mail from the people who are training and they said it was going very well.
"I am not aware of any problem with the training. We meet with the officers regularly and, in fact, I will be meeting with the supervisors in the morning and I will bring this issue up.
"Cabinet made the decision to combine, and it's incumbent on us to carry it out. The aim was to avoid duplication of questions asked of passengers.
"By putting Customs officers on the primary Immigration counter, you only have to ask those questions one time. The process is therefore quicker."
But besides being quicker, she said she believed interdiction will be improved, instead of having Immigration and then Customs officers at the airport, there will be two tiers of Customs officers. This gives the interdiction officers two bites at the cherry, she said.
"We do have to go through this learning curve, but I think it will be much more efficient in the long-run.Yes, there has been change, and sometimes change causes turmoil, but nobody has raised any of these issues.
"We have an open-door policy and people can raise any issues they have."
General Secretary of the Bermuda Public Service Association Ed Ball said he had not heard anything official about the alleged unrest, and said if Customs officers were disgruntled, they should follow the usual union channels.