The Nadi International Airport now has a state of the art Pallet X- Ray system to combat illegal smuggling of drugs, explosive products and other items that pose a direct threat to our country.

The half a million-dollar investment in the NUCTEC X-ray inspection system which was launched this morning comes from the most advanced and best proven CX product platform, and fully inherits and shares improved image quality with a variety of professional image enhancement processing functions, ergonomic and friendly user interface, intelligent networking capabilities and applications, excellent reliability and maintainability.

The Fiji Revenue and Customs Service (FRCS) Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Visvanath Das who is also the Vice- Chair for the World Customs Organization Asia Pacific Region said that the pallet x- ray scanner is capable of color coding organic, inorganic and a mixture of materials with different effective atomic numbers for better identification of objects. Explosives & narcotics automatic detection and suspect organic materials highlight are also available to aid x-ray screening.

“Let me assure that we have stationed experienced Customs Officers at our border points to profile passengers and cargo before they enter Fiji to identify and mitigate the risk of illegal activities. Assets to support our staff include our Detector Dog Unit at Nadi, drug detection equipment and X-ray equipment which is used for in-depth screening of baggage, cargo and mail,” Mr. Das said.

Mr. Das also stressed that the sale of counterfeit goods and medicines has become an important profit-machine for transnational crime syndicates, accounting for about one- third of the value of transnational crime flows.

“We are continuously working to enhance our risk profiling capabilities around passengers and goods and craft. This capability is critical to ensure legitimate trade and travel is facilitated while illicit trade and travel is detected and managed appropriately.

Advance information around people, goods and craft is critical and a core component of our risk identification strategy”.

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