It’s finally connected – the new SIVICC national radar system, costing over €31 million and involving radar beacons up and down the country, was switched on this week, guaranteeing the Algarve the vital security its coastline has been lacking. But it comes at a price. Locals who have been protesting over the “hideous mast” erected recently at Ponta da Piedade beauty spot near Lagos will just have to get used to it.
“It’s part of the system,” explained mayoress Joaquina Matos. “There is nothing we can do about it, however unattractive it may appear. It is a question of national security.”
Considering the bigger picture, the ugliness of Ponta da Piedade’s beacon is a small detail. The last five years have habitually seen drug boats and smugglers using the southern coast as a point of entry because neighbouring Spain has been covered by its own state-of-the-art radar system.
As Correio da Manhã newspaper writes in its report of the SIVICC (standing for ‘Sistema Integrado de Vigilância Comando e Controlo’), the phenomenon of “non-identified boats changing course for Portugal” after the Spanish coast was locked-tight was “very visible”. Drug boats and bandits were aware “that detection in the south would be less effective”, said the newspaper.
Nevertheless, GNR patrols have kept criminals on their toes, using night-vision binoculars and infrared cameras.
“The apprehension of more than 2,000 kilos of hashish in Tavira in November 2011 was made with the help of this kind of equipment,” said the newspaper. “The drug had come in on a rapid launch from Morocco.”
SIVICC, now in full swing, represents “a gigantic step in technical terms” plugging the many grey areas in the Algarve coastline, a GNR source is quoted.
Radar beacons are finally operational along the coast at Praia Verde in Castro Marim, on the island of Armona outside Olhão, at Ancão beach near Almancil, at Galé Beach and just outside Lagos.
A further 15 fixed beacons cover the west coast from Cabo Sardão in Odemira to Montedor, eight kilometres north of Viana do Castelo, while eight mobile units (installed in four-wheel-drive vehicles) make up the network, which centralises information at a GNR control base in Alcântara near Lisbon.
“Drug trafficking, illegal immigration, search and rescue missions and checks on fishing and pollution” will be the main focus of the new system, which substitutes the obsolete LAOS network that used to operate very much in isolation – each centre collating its own material and not enjoying open access with others.
LAOS was switched off in 2010 and since then there have been strong criticisms of security along Portugal’s 943-kilometre stretch of coastline.
It was the government of José Sócrates that paved the way for SIVICC but “problems with private land where fixed beacons had to be sited” and other issues held up progress.
Presenting this week’s long-awaited news, a source for the Ministry of Internal Administration described SIVICC as a “fundamental system. It allows, as never before, for the control and vigilance, in real time, of any kind of illegal activity along Portugal’s coast”.
The SIVICC system is part of a Europe-wide project, called EUROSUR, focusing on coastal surveillance, particularly along the Atlantic and western Mediterranean coasts. Portugal and Spain contribute considerably to this project as important agents in the fight against illegal immigration and human trafficking.
