Have you ever wondered how Beirut Port maintains security despite the fact that the main highway runs adjacent to it? Well, I did and apparently the committee overseeing the port were themselves worried and have taken appropriate action:
To combat the inherent problems of people smuggling; shipping container theft and tax evasion, the Beirut Seaport Committee needed a perimeter security system capable of withstanding the harsh coastal conditions and operating without power on the seaport’s 5 km perimeter fence.
[…]
The chosen security system, Secure Fence™, developed by Future Fibre Technologies and installed by Site Technology – Beirut has overcome these challenges to operate successfully on the seaport site’s perimeter.
The installed system interfaces with the Beirut Seaport’s CCTV system and importantly, requires no power anywhere along the perimeter.[…] The entire 5km perimeter operates with just one Secure Fence™ system, which is completely immune to the very salty conditions encountered at seaport sites.
I cannot believe how ignorant the people of Lebanon are. Just because some company who is owned by a politically supported person has taken $1.2M to install the fence system does not mean the perimeter of Port Beirut is secure.
To clarify this consider the following facts: The execution of the project was to take 5 months, after 3 years it is not yet completed; the fence intrusion system which is supposed to be immune to false alarms constantly gives alarms for no reason, the interface with the CCTV system is not functional and freezes up the system, the CCTV cameras suddenly stop working and each individual camera has already been replaced more than once in the last 3 years.
Why? The installer company has cheated in his products, does not have the experience or the knowhow to install such systems and lacks qualified professional specialists.
Are we surprised? Not at all! The owner of the installer company was an X-General Director of one of the important ministries of Lebanon and since he knows all the right people then this has been planned all along from the beginning. This was the company’s first project and was established for this project!
The initial project cost was around $600K, an additional $600K was paid to the installer company to fix the system but with no results. The system is supposed to be fully automated, however since it has many problems Port Beirut is paying an additional $100K per year to the installer company just to monitor the system.
And we always wondered how they do it?
Thanks for the “leak”.