A recently revealed report of the UK Department for Transport, along with a reliable source in the British High Commission in Dhaka, shed light on how the shoddy job, including alleged false entries made by an airport screener on the list of checked goods and a casual smoke break by a X-ray machine handler, led to the monitoring team of the United Kingdom to impose the ban on Dhaka-London direct air cargo.
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According to a report, published in a daily newspaper in Bangladesh, the operator concerned in the false entry incident, who is said to have scored 90-plus marks in a screeners’ test carried out online by an international firm that provides security service to different countries, reportedly screened eight items with explosive trace detector (ETD) at the cargo complex of the Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport, but allegedly recorded 25 in the logbook. The news report claimed the same has even been confirmed by an official at the Ministry of Civil Aviation. As if that wasn’t enough, the news report read that the UK team was reportedly also put off by another incident in which yet another staffer was allegedly found not properly monitoring the X-ray machine that he was manning, and even left it unmanned for a smoke break.
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The news report further underlines that other reasons that led to the ban as well as warning from the British Prime Minister of more such actions, were screening lapses with X-ray and ETD machines, manpower and equipment crisis, non-implementation of Corrective Action Plan (CAP), visible lapses in supervision and leaving London-bound air cargo unprotected and unguarded on the airside.
