Apec meet security a concern: Steven

By ELIZABETH VUVU
AS Papua New Guinea prepares to host the Apec summit in 2018, the country needs to step up its efforts to ensure operators, airports and passengers are safe and secure, Civil Aviation Minister Davis Steven says.
Speaking during the third aviation conference in Kokopo last week, Steven said though aviation terrorism has not been a significant issue for PNG to date, the 2018 Apec summit may be an event that would attract world and terrorist attention.
Steven said one reason for the lack of terrorist activity in PNG was due to the absence of a suitable trigger to ensure that world attention was maximised for terrorists.
“With Apec coming, we need to step up efforts to ensure operators, airports and passengers are secure,” he said.
Steven said security remained a constant concern for all countries, including PNG.
He said most recently there were reports of attacks in Istanbul Airport in June and in Brussels in March this year targeting landside areas of airports.
Steven said this confirmed that terrorist attraction to soft targets and the securing of landside areas was now more important.
He said security was the emerging need for infrastructure capacity that was associated with Apec.
“Some of this may be a risk, however, if aviation infrastructure capacity does not keep pace with growth in demand.”
He said regulators generally responded to the threats by legislation, operator requirements and surveillance such as passenger and cargo screening.
Terrorists respond to these matters by the use of innovative explosive devices that are hard to detect, suicide bombers and third party explosive devices that are placed on one mode of transport with the intention that they will explode when subsequently placed on an aircraft.
“The industry needs to be educated and kept informed about trends in aviation,” he said.