Haaretz probe: Israel airport security often carried out by untrained employees
New firm responsible for security checks pays lower wages, has trouble finding experienced employees.
By Zohar Blumenkrantz Tags: Israel newsAs airports the world over tighten their security following the attempted Christmas bombing on a Northwest Airlines plane, the final security check at Ben-Gurion International Airport is being carried out by employees who have not been trained for the job, Haaretz has learned.
This month, the airport has been lacking professional security officers, because the new firm responsible for examining passengers and their carry-on luggage does not have enough staff.
The Airports Authority has been using its own staff to compensate for the lack of manpower, but some of these people did not receive the training to carry out the security checks necessary, security officers told Haaretz.
This is the last, most important security check, directly prior to embarkation. At this point, passengers have passed the first security interview and received a boarding pass, and said good-bye to anyone who is not traveling.
Here, passengers pass through a metal detector, and their carry-on luggage is scanned.
Until now, the check was carried out by L.M., a private firm, but in January, the role passed to another firm, Hatama.
Hatama, which won the Airports Authority tender, pays lower wages, and as a result is having trouble finding experienced, trained employees.
Many employees of L.M. refused to work for Hatama for lower pay. The Airports Authority staff members filling in the gaps generally work interviewing passengers and checking luggage. Only a few are trained to handle the X-ray machines used to scan carry-on bags.
The Airports Authority is responsible for teaching the private firms' staff how to use the X-ray machines. However, in at least one incident last week, untrained staff members were asked to operate the machines.
According to a security officer who spoke on condition of anonymity, the reinforcement employees received a short overview of the machine, which they then proceeded to operate.
"Special training is required to operate the X-ray machine," the officer told Haaretz. "But the rushed training that we underwent last week was a joke. I'm afraid I will be asked to do a job I do not know how to do, and that I will be unable to identify suspicious objects in passengers' hand luggage."
Other security officers complained that they are overworked because they have to make up for the lack of staff.
In response the Airports Authority said that passengers' security is "a primary concern," and that "all security checks are carried out by professional and trained personnel, with no exceptions."
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Security officers in Ben Gurion Airport. |
| Photo by: (Archive) |
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When I lived in Israel in the mid-1980's there was no homeless, and little unemployment. If you didn't have a job Histadrut would create one for you. Now I get emails saying that a large proportion of the population lives in poverty. This is a result of people like Sheldon Adelson, who made himself super-rich by fleecing the goys at his casinos and used that money to buy influence in Israel. Hey, when I visited Israel in 1959 I shook hands with David Ben Gurion. He was the man! It meant something back then to be a Jew in Israel!
One needs only to go through Ben Gurion Airport to realize that there is total chaos in the security organization - and at check-in. At the X-ray machines, it happens often that the "security officers" don't even look at their screen but are arguing among them..... This explains maybe the numerous "security breaches" that were experienced already in the days of the previous terminal. There's a new terminal, but still the same balagan. We must just hope that no one REALLY decides to do something wrong.
Crassius, the man who loved gold so much that the Parthians executed him by pouring molten gold down his throat after he was defeated invading their nation for profit got rich in an interesting way. He was what we would call a 'real estate speculator.' He had a 'Fire Department', and when a building was on fire in Rome, Crassius's fire department would rush to the scene, fight off other fire departments, while Crasius dickered with the building owner over the price of putting out the fire. Most now would agree that a critical social function, like the police, fire department, EMS, defense, courts should all be handled by government functions or at the very least non-profit corporations under tight regulation. . . I would put airport security in the same category. Too important to be made into a profit center for someone who cares only about the bottom line. Crass, like Crassius who gave us his name as a word, people should not be given the public trust.
You should be pssed at your own incompetent TSA and Janet Incompetano who stated that "the system works" and "we knew about the suicide bombers intentenion and planned to interrogate him immediately upon landing".
....was there any need to compare modern airport security and the problem of underpaid unqualified staff with the holocaust??!!!?? And concerning the "most recent" event of the Israeli sports team at the olympics (I think that was 72.....) That was before I was born, and Im 34 now.... Please define the term recent.... Being stuck in the past is no good.... Believe it or not, Germany moved on, reunified, etc......
Weberman writes, "This is what happens when the Israeli capitalists get control from the Socialists who cleared the rocks away to build Israel." Those socialists kept Israel shackled economically for decades. It's only since the 1990s that Israel has slowly freed itself from the stranglehold of socialism to become the economic success it is today. That said, going for the low-cost bidder without insisting that services delivered be maintained just invites a race to the bottom in employee wages. The professionalism that was once expected of Israel's screeners is at risk if a bid is won only by paying less and getting less qualified and less dedicated employees.
Where are all those talkbackers from last week? Or were they just coming out of the woodwork to promote profiling?
Completely understandable, since you are already live in a country with great tradition in upholding the law. My family remembers well the rule of the "racial laws" youre geandparents upheld so diligently. In more recent times, we remember the incompetent security measures in Gernany which allowed the massacre of the Israeli sport team at the Olympics, the refusal to accept help from Israeli security specialist in an attempt to free the hostages, the incompetent "rescue" operation of untrainrd German policemen leading to the death of all hostages, and in the aftermath the staged hijacking of a Lufthansa plane (as admitted by Berhard Vogel), which allowed Germany to free the murderers. Here, we indict corrupt politicians and discusd problems openly in our free press. In contrast, you had a Chancellor who signed a contract with Gasprom a week before leaving office and joining Gasprom 1 week after leaving office w/o being indicted for corruption, I guess the bananas are all yours!
When something is privatized the few get rich at the expense of the many. This is what happens when the Israeli capitalists get control from the Socialists who cleared the rocks away to build Israel. A lot of this comes from the support of rich Jewish Americans not Israelis. Merge the capitalists with the theocrats and you have an even worse situation.
Are they unionized? Why are they privatized in the first place? This seems to be a government function. Capitalism is such a wonderful system.
The procedures and the rules applied of ben Gurion immigration officers are at least questionable: everything depends on the skill or experience of the employee you get. Everything depends on chance and fortune. My friend asked politely which were the procedures and was answered to shup up otherwise she was going to be bent to the chair like a dog! This happened last week.
Your remarks make me wonder, since I have travelled to Israel numerous times and elsewhere in the Middle East when I was a reporter covering the oil industry, have you ever been to Israel or to, say, Saudi Arabia? Somehow your words make me doubt it. Israel is a modern country with fine restaurants, beautiful scenery, a city that rivals Fort Lauderdale in its care for its beaches, a history that dates back centuries. And right now the weather is lovely and warm. Which is something I cannot say for Florida this morning. 0 degrees Celsius outside my house.
My next vacation will be in a Rule-of-Law-state and not in a Banana-Republic like Israel...
indeed: monkeys. Airports Authority claims "passengers' security is "a primary concern", apparently money is more important. Awarding the tender to a company that can't deliver because of too low wages isn't the smartest of moves. Their other claim means that if I am a professional baker and trained swimmer I qualify for carrying out security checks.
Typically a tender is good for real estate deale, but for Airport Security money may NEVER be involved.Only the best quality and thus the best paid people can do the job. It is cynically that at the same moment all international airports are spending millions to step up security,like buying new machines in Amsterdam, Israel is to step down the level of security because of a new cheaper company. Did you ever calculated how much a succesful attack-God forbid-will cost in lives and damages? I suggest the Israeli governement will step in and supervise the quality of the security guards. It is a matter of livesavings !!
The harmful Histadrut is no where to be seen. I would not be surprised if they tax these underpaid unqualified workers but they continue to leave them unrepresented as they fill their own pockets.
that the first control didn't understand much English and all of them let me travel with a big piece of glass and metal in the cabin. No questions asked even though I tried to bring it to discussion.