 The Ministry of Tourism, Investment, Creative Industry, Sculpture and Information through the OECS Regional Tourism Competitiveness Project, or RTCP, procured and installed a baggage carousel at the Castries Ferry Terminal podcastries. This initiative formed a part of a World Bank-funded project which supports the regional tourism mandate of promoting inter-regional travel by sea. Donal Envite is a permanent secretary in the Ministry of Tourism, Investment, Creative Industry, Sculpture and Information. At the beginning of the ORAW-TCP project, it came to the Ministry that in order to facilitate our competitiveness as a destination, not only with stay-over arrivals, but also on the marine side and particularly our seaferry travel, that our persons or guests coming from the French Antilles and neighbouring islands who normally use this facility, we would have noticed that there are a number of gaps that we wanted to close. Our colleagues at the Customs and Excise Department, along with Slasper, made it very clear that for a tourism sort of activity, we needed to step up a number of aspects of this facility. To that end, Customs identified the needs of a baggage scanner as well as a carousel that would not only facilitate ease of customer service to passengers, but would have also allowed to enhance the monitoring and carrying out the mandate that they have as Customs and Excise officers. Minister for Tourism, Investment, Creative, Industry, Sculpture and Information, Honourable Dr. Ernest Hillay said the installation of the carousel significantly improves service at the castries very terminal. This is Phase 2, they've had Phase 1, which is a scanner, again another significant addition to enhancing the service that is offered to visitors when they come in here. I'm sure Customs is a lot happier for that piece of equipment being provided and for the carousel, I'm sure Slasper is happier for it. Certainly we in the tourism sector, we are extremely pleased to have this available and to formally today hand over to Slasper. I know they've had training for the last few days, the suppliers have spent considerable time training at least 14 persons between Slasper and Customs, and I believe all of that would add to ensuring that we have a high quality product available to our visitors when they come in. So I am as Minister really delighted that we can formally hand over. I'm looking forward as Minister to see the opening up of regional travel even more, to see the ferry bringing in more persons from Matinika and Guadalupe and Dominica and for St Lucia's regional travel arrival to increase significantly. The baggage carousel comes at a time when the handling of traveller luggage is being assessed internationally for adherents to public health, passenger safety and border security protocols. Bags will be maintained on a turning belt that is sanitized for each use. Director of Seaports at the St Lucia and Seaports Authority, Adrian Hillay, said the carousel also minimizes the risk of incidents. All the agencies who were part of the discussion, Customs, Immigration, the Port Police, our ferry providers, more specifically our customers, they will be quite happy because what existed before was a forklift coming into the ferry terminal to bring bags. So no longer will we have that risk of a forklift hitting a passenger. Forklifts are no longer allowed, we will be having the carousel. So on behalf of my general manager, management and council, and also on behalf of our partner agencies, we'd like to say a big thank you to the Minister of Tourism and also to the PCU for planning and executing this project. EC 872 302 dollars was invested in the procurement and installation of the baggage carousel and the training of staff. The handing over ceremony was held on Wednesday 2nd of March 2022 at the Castries ferry terminal. From the Government Information Service, Humedy Mock reporting.