The road to becoming Collector of Customs was not always an easy one for Winniefred Fostine-DeSilva.Women were not taken on at the same rank as men when she first started working at the Customs Department 41 years ago.It took her 19 years just to become a senior customs officer.“That was a lot of time,” she said. “Things have changed.”But she did eventually break through the glass ceiling and was made Collector of Customs in 2001, a post she held until her retirement last month.When she started there were fewer Customs officers dealing with more passengers.They worked 24-hour shifts, which did not give them a lot of time to spend with their families. They were also responsible for Immigration matters and baggage claim.“It has come a long way,” said Mrs Fostine-DeSilva. “When I was an officer we checked every passenger who came in. Then it went to checking all Bermudians or returning residents and maybe ten percent of tourists. Now it is risk-based. The Customs officers are highly trained and know what to look for. They will have intelligence-led inspections, compliance checks and they may just do ad hoc baggage checks. Everyone on a particular aircraft might be checked, for example.”She said the scariest thing she probably ever found in someone’s luggage was a gun. Firearms weren’t the norm for Bermuda in the 1970s and 1980s when she was inspecting baggage. It was also not unusual to find snakes that crawled into golf bags, undetected.“I loved my job,” she said. “You get to deal with people from all walks of life. It is diverse. It is something different each week. There was opportunity to travel. You get to give back to your community by protecting borders. That is quite rewarding.”Mrs Fostine-DeSilva said sometimes Customs officers get a bad rap, because people often don’t understand what they do.“I don’t think they get the credit for law enforcement,” she said. “People often think it is police officers interrupting drug smuggling when often it is the Customs officers who do it. It is not an easy job, especially if people are belligerent and don’t want to be checked. We had very few complaints considering how many difficult people we deal with on a regular basis.”Her job as Collector of Customs also meant that she sometimes had to take on the role of acting Deputy Governor on occasion.“I was the first substantive female post holder [as Collector of Customs],” she said. “Norma Smith acted in the position for two years. I was responsible for running the department and ensuring that all the legislation required to deal with imports and exports was properly administered. It was, and probably still is, the single largest source of government revenue. It is a major portfolio. We do agency work for Immigration, health, environmental protection, police, and national copyrights. It is a gamut of things we are responsible for. Controlling all that was not an easy job, but it was an interesting job.”One of the highlights of her career was training others to reach their goals and ensuring they had the necessary funding to do so.“Providing the skills for them to do their job effectively ... that was a highlight of my career,” she said. “The biggest highlight was having four people graduate with bachelor degrees in customs legislation. We had one officer go to the World Customs Organisation and gain his certification. I went to the WCO many times, because I am an accredited facilitator in customs operations, meaning I can do diagnostic studies for other customs departments.”This means that people from other parts of the Caribbean have frequently come to Bermuda to observe the practices of the Island’s Customs Department to gain insight into improving their own customs departments. The WCO puts out best practices and Bermuda has implemented most of them.“Our customs automated processing system is well known throughout the Caribbean,” said Mrs Fostine-DeSilva. “So they work with us in simplifying procedures — setting them up, [establishing] the legal basis for having simplified procedures, electronic payment and electronic clearance. We have had one officer, Kelly Trott, in the Bermuda department who has carried out a diagnostic with the WCO in Trinidad. Bermuda is small but dynamic.”In her position as Collector, Mrs Fostine-DeSilva guided the Department in its modernisation programmes, and oversaw the purchase and coming deployment of X-ray technology for sea containers. She also hosted and co-hosted several international law enforcement conferences here, and sits on the executive committee of the Caribbean Customs Law Enforcement Council. She is an alumnus of the University of Maryland and Webster University where she obtained her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in business and finance, respectively.She said some of her challenges have been maintaining staffing levels and getting qualified people to apply for jobs in the department.“Customs is a good career opportunity for young Bermudians,” she said. “We provide a two-year training programme. Once they pass their examinations there are opportunities to move right to the top. I did it, so there is no reason why someone else can’t. It is there for them. They can also move to other government departments. There is quite a lot of opportunity. We have two officers at the moment training in the United Kingdom to get their law degrees. We have one person who is still a Customs officer and studying for his law degree, sponsored by us. Customs is a good basis for understanding the legal system as Customs officers need to know 111 pieces of legislation that we administer. They have to have a basic idea of how the law is administered and how it works. Just doing the Revenue Act for customs tariffs can be quite intense, especially classifying goods. That is why we have a special unit for it.”Now that she is retired she plans to take a couple of months off and then look for something new and challenging.“We will see how it goes,” she said. “My husband, Dennis, and I have been planning retirement for years.”She plans to spend more time at her favourite hobbies, reading, gardening and golfing.