8-10 June 2021, Online workshop hosted by ROCB AP

The WCO Asia/Pacific regional Virtual Workshop on Canines was held from 8 June to 10 June 2021. The Workshop was hosted by the ROCB A/P in close cooperation with the WCO under the sponsorship of the Korea Customs Cooperation Fund (CCF/Korea).  The 21 Customs administrations in the Asia and Pacific region attended the Workshop. Together with the canine experts from the WCO and Mr. Norikazu Kuramoto, Head of the ROCB A/P, Mr. Gideon Ilkwon HAN, Program Manager of the ROCB A/P, and Ms. Sherman YU, Program Manager of the ROCB A/P also attended as facilitators/coordinators for the Workshop.

In order to enhance Members’ capacities in the area of canine enforcement to combat the smuggling of dangerous and contraband items and to serve as an effective regional platform to share best practices and define common challenges, the Workshop covered WCO fentanyl project and Experiences from AP members. Through a series of presentations and discussions, the participants understanded that canine capability is the effective and efficient tool to tackle the illegal goods with minimal disruptive manner, such as drugs, cash, wild life product etc.

During the workshop, Experiences from 8 AP members, namely Hong Kong China, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, India, Australia, Maldives and Pakistan were shared through the country presentations and the participants actively participated in the discussion of each training, breed and operation scheme for benchmark, facilitated by experts. Also, the participants exchanged their experiences to address the challenges on how to implement detector dog activity under the COVID-19 pandemic.

The active contribution of the participants resulted in a successful workshop and this workshop supported enhancing communication and information sharing among Member administrations even in the pandemic situation. The participants expressed their appreciation to the Korea Customs Service, the WCO, the ROCB A/P and the Experts for their support to the workshop.

 For more information, please contact at rocb@rocbap.org.