Security in the port of Taranto

I’m Letizia, I’ve been working for the Vis security company for 18 years.

Our job is general security, specifically screening access to the port.

What this means is that all personnel entering the port must be properly authorised, and to ensure this we check people and vehicles, mostly at the gates, but in practice we work in close collaboration with all the law enforcement agencies.

So inevitably we are like a big family.

The good thing that is unique to the port environment is that we are required to undergo a continual training cycle.

This makes our job better, not least because we are constantly in contact with the public.

The big new development that Taranto is seeing is the introduction of cruise ships.

We are all hopeful that this will be successful because it could well be the future of Taranto.

The new demands of cruise traffic

The port is a male-dominated environment, though you have to take into consideration the fact that we security guards are not seen as ‘women’ or ‘men’, we are simply guards.

But in situations such as security checks, for example, on cruise ships, there is a real need to have both a female security officer and a male security officer.

Because obviously the checks have to be done on people of the same sex.

With cruise traffic there is a different focus on our part: it requires different skills.

Of course we are ready for this, but it is also a challenge, an incentive to do something different, a stimulus that means this port could be the future of Taranto.

*** Automatically generated subtitles ***