An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

Down­town Own­ers and Mer­chants As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Gre­go­ry Aboud says the on­go­ing in­dus­tri­al at the port of Port-of-Spain is ex­ac­er­bat­ing T&T’s for­eign ex­change prob­lem.

Asked about the on­go­ing in­dus­tri­al ac­tion at the Tourism Trinidad Cruise Launch for the 2024/2025 sea­son, Aboud urged the Sea­men and Wa­ter­front Work­ers Trade Union (SWW­TU) and its pres­i­dent gen­er­al Michael An­nisette to re­con­sid­er their po­si­tion.

“Peo­ple who are do­ing busi­ness with us may not al­ways be the stereo­type that Mr An­nisette has in mind, of self­ish peo­ple and of big peo­ple and of peo­ple with a lot of mon­ey. A lot of peo­ple do busi­ness with the lead­ers of those or­gan­i­sa­tions that de­pend on us for com­pet­i­tive­ness and for re­li­a­bil­i­ty, and at the mo­ment, we are not com­pet­i­tive,” said Aboud, who added that be­cause of the port shut­down, many ex­ports cur­rent­ly can not be ex­e­cut­ed.

“We are dam­ag­ing our ex­port trade. There are hun­dreds of con­tain­ers that go out of Trinidad every week to ex­port des­ti­na­tions in the re­gion that are be­ing af­fect­ed at a time when for­eign ex­change is num­ber one top­ic on every­body’s lips. For­eign ex­change is sit­ting wait­ing to be earned be­cause the car­go can­not go out. I would ask Mr. An­nisette and his team, to re­con­sid­er their sit­u­a­tion, to ac­cept that we are in a very se­ri­ous po­si­tion, and to vary some­what this plan of ac­tion not to dam­age the coun­try as bad­ly as it is be­ing done right now,” said the DO­MA Pres­i­dent.

On Wednes­day, the Amer­i­can Cham­ber of Com­merce of Trinidad and To­ba­go (Am­cham T&T), the En­er­gy Cham­ber of T&T, the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce, and the T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ers As­so­ci­a­tion, in a state­ment, called on the Gov­ern­ment to ur­gent­ly take what­ev­er ac­tion nec­es­sary to re­solve the on­go­ing in­dus­tri­al ac­tion caus­ing chaos at the Port of Port-of-Spain.

In re­sponse via a me­dia re­lease, NATUC said, “This state­ment from the cham­bers ap­pears to show a deeply bi­ased, one-sided fo­cus on the com­mer­cial sec­tor’s in­ter­ests, pri­ori­tis­ing car­go move­ment over the le­git­i­mate, long­stand­ing con­cerns of dock­work­ers.”

When asked about the tim­ing of the in­dus­tri­al ac­tion by re­porters, Aboud said the union’s ac­tion could equal­ly be seen as self­ish.

At a press con­fer­ence on Wednes­day, Sea­men and Wa­ter­front Work­ers Trade Union (SWW­TU) pres­i­dent gen­er­al Michael An­nisette said that 1,300 port work­ers are de­mand­ing a 12 per cent salary in­crease for 2014 to 2017.