Task force to help improve passenger experience at airport

task force may soon be established to improve the passenger experience at the airport for residents in light of what one MP perceives as unsatisfactory treatment from border officials.

The disclosure came from Minister of Tourism Ian Gooding-Edghill in response to St Michael South Central MP Marsha Caddle’s criticism of several negative interactions Barbadians have had with Customs officers.

During Friday’s Estimates hearings on the tourism and international transport appropriations, Caddle said there was a need to set new policies and standards of customer service for all people using the Grantley Adams International Airport.

She said: “Even as a young child, I was disturbed by the fact that the experience coming through Customs of Black Barbadians coming back home was completely different from the experience of visitors coming to our country. Minister, this is the year 2024, there are all kinds of national security concerns with which we must concern ourselves; that is given.

“But . . . as a grown woman coming back through the airport in December of 2023, I would not expect to experience the same kind of bifurcation that I saw happening as a child. I know that the revenue that they are getting – from a grandmother that brings back some sneakers for her little granddaughter; the revenue that you are getting from that exercise of wading through a person’s personal effects in full sight of the arrivals hall is not enough to warrant the indignity of that exercise.”

In response, Gooding-Edghill said that although the officers were not under his ministry, the number of complaints was hard to ignore, and as such, something needed to be done.

“We have to be careful as we build out a destination that we do not create unnecessary problems for the travelling public. What I will commit, and subject to the approval of the line minister, is that we can perhaps form a task force with the Controller of Customs to see how best we can look at this issue.”

He added: “They have their job to do and we have to respect them, but at the same time, I understand some of the concerns that you have raised. I use the example when we travel and we are going through Miami, you see thousands of passengers going through doing their security checks; that is alright. The same thing applies when you go to the United Kingdom, but what is sometimes very upsetting to passengers when they land here, including locals when they complain, is often how they perceive the customer service. We have to focus more on training [and] the consistent delivery of service.”

The tourism minister said the officers all served an important duty to safeguard the security of the country. However, he stressed that it was equally important to be “mindful of the potential backlash if we do not get all the customer service going in the right direction at the Grantley Adams International Airport”.

Caddle dismissed the notion that some of the negative experiences with Customs were down to security measures.

“As a traveller myself, I tend not to feel too inconvenienced by delays that are going to keep me safe, that is one thing,” she said. “Much of the operations that we see in the situation I just described involves things like people actually checking the commercial value of things people are bringing back, charging duties, writing them in a receipt book, sending somebody to pay.

“There is a line stretching as far back as the eye can see while all of this is happening, while one person is walking from one place to the other with this receipt book…. That is not a national security concern, that is an efficiency [in the] operation that can be improved on the one hand, but on the other, there are issues that I mentioned earlier that suggest that the targeting for that process is problematic with the history of Barbados.”