The Barbados government is treading carefully as it prepares to implement biometric border screening. The country’s Immigration Department has pushed back the implementation date in order to more closely examine sensitive issues related to the project.
Originally, the biometric border screening was set to go live on April 1st of this year, with multiple fingerprint reader stations already having been set up at the Grantley Adams International Airport. But Chief Immigration Officer Wayne Marshall has explained that the government wants more time to explore any potential legal issues related to the project, and to better communicate its benefits to the public, before going live.
The cautious approach for such a public-facing, large-scale project is not uncommon; the Philippines’ election agency, for example, orchestrated a strenuous PR campaign in support of the country’s adoption of biometric polling, and the US Customs and Border Protection agency is taking an incremental approach to rolling out biometric airport screening in that country. But meanwhile, in Aruba, another country with a strong focus on tourism, biometric border screening has been embraced with more enthusiasm as a means of both maintaining security and smoothing out the travel experience.
Barbados’ government hasn’t yet established a new go-live date for its biometric border screening, but the project is evidently still planned to go ahead once the other issues of concern have been resolved.
Source: Caribbean News Now
—
March 21, 2016 – by Alex Perala
Follow Us