Welcome to ASFN Fan Forums! We're glad to have you here. Please feel free to browse the forum. We'd like to invite you to join our community; doing so will enable you to view additional forums and post with our other members.
Registered Members don't see these ads. Register now it's free!
In my career of choice I have to do work that is regulated by the TSA and A few weeks ago we got this update, which seemed a little odd to me. It has been a topic of discussion in the meetings I attend and I thought I throw it out for discussion here.
Quote:
TWIC
Transportation Worker Identification Credential
Application Now available in 13 Languages
This is supposed to be our highest form of port security for delivering unescorted into and out of our ports. I am surprised that they are printing in 13 languages at all but many common languages are not an option. French, German and Italian for example (keep the french jokes to a minimum).
It just seems like an odd selection of languages to me.
Versus our state of California language selection for Federal Hazmat licensing. Basically the same requirements but actually requires testing, whereas the TWIC card is background and history check only, no testing.
Amharic
Arabic
Armenian
Cambodian
Chinese
Croatian
French
German
Greek
Hebrew
Hindi
Hmong
Hungarian
Indonesian
Italian
Japanese
Korean
Laotian
Persian/Farsi
Polish
Portuguese
Punjabi
Romanian
Russian
Samoan
Spanish
Tagalog/Filipino
Thai
Tongan
Turkish
Vietnamese.
A non issue I know, but I found it curious, at a trade meeting it was pretty much the topic of choice - The new requirements and the odd language selections.
Here is a chart that relates the top 20 languages (out of 311) spoken in the US, 8 of the top twenty are not an option for getting in and out of our nations ports.
I get the feeling they will be rolling out more languages in the future. The TWIC is still a fairly new thing and they are still expanding to more locations that will be able to issue the card.
I got my TWIC card earlier this year. Though I personally had no problems, it seems like a good number of colleagues are having to go back numerous times because of problems activating the card. Definitely still a few things to work out...
Our guys have not had any problems really, especially since the background check is the same as Hazprints. Basically all of my employees have to be TWIC certified (by definition) prior to the TWIC program coming out. I am just fairly suprised at the lack of security that it actually involves. An escorted delivery or pick up from a port is a huge deal to me (I may be alone). We are going to be having another huge industry meeting about this tomorrow, I am interested to see what people have to say.
Currently, as my guys go in, the guards usually walk around the vehicles with the rolling floor mirrors, it has kind of been a running joke how the inspectors typically are looking in other directions, pretty much anywhere but down at the mirrors, as they do the underbody checks.
The problem they are having seems to be with the actual cards themselves. Hopefully they are getting through the background checks with no problems
They'll get the e-mail telling them the card's ready, but when they go pick them up, the cards don't activate and they have to order a replacement from LM that will take another few weeks to come in. Maybe it's just our issuing location.
I really don't know how much more security this will add. IIRC, it's up to each port facility to determine if they want to require the TWIC as part of their credentials.
You seem to be in the know more than I am. I haven't the need to use my card. It's just been sitting in a drawer since I got it.
I believe our area has 13 readers but currently there is only one that is functioning, the cards themselves seem to be working but they are being entered in manually instead of being run through the readers... I think the only functioning one is in Long Beach. They are not overly concerned as our cut off date is April of 2009.
Linear Mode
