Carisa Lee

Trinida­di­an cruise ship work­ers cur­rent­ly be­ing quar­an­tined on the En­chant­ment of the Seas are pleased with the Gov­ern­ment’s so­lu­tion which fi­nal­ly al­lowed them to take their sec­ond COVID-19 tests yes­ter­day.

“We are hap­py that we are on the fi­nal leg of this ar­du­ous jour­ney,” one na­tion­al told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, hours af­ter 295 of them were test­ed at the Cruise Ship Com­plex in Port-of-Spain.

The tests were ini­tial­ly staged for Tues­day but protest ac­tion by port work­ers seek­ing wage in­creas­es and bet­ter work­ing con­di­tions pre­vent­ed the process.

But even as the work­ers con­tin­ued to press their con­cerns yes­ter­day, Min­istry of Health of­fi­cials were able to con­duct the tests af­ter the ves­sel docked at the Port of Port-of-Spain just af­ter 3 pm. Health of­fi­cials who car­ried out the test­ing ar­rived in shut­tles and in their own ve­hi­cles and the en­tire process was com­plet­ed with­out any is­sues.

The cruise work­ers quar­an­tine pe­ri­od aboard the ves­sel is sched­uled to end to­mor­row. If none of them tests pos­i­tive from yes­ter­day’s sam­pling, they could be home on the week­end. Six of their com­pa­tri­ots test­ed pos­i­tive af­ter they re­turned and were first test­ed on June 14.

Speak­ing as the tests were be­ing con­duct­ed, Sea­men and Wa­ter­front Work­ers’ Trade Union pres­i­dent gen­er­al Michael An­nisette de­nied the protest ac­tion was timed to in­ter­fere with the test­ing, say­ing the work­ers’ cry start­ed long be­fore COVID-19. He said all they want­ed was for the Gov­ern­ment to im­ple­ment salary in­creas­es that were al­ready legal­ly ne­go­ti­at­ed.

“Work­ers are dis­sat­is­fied. It’s not now we have been ask­ing for this,” An­nisette said.

An­nisette told Guardian Me­dia their protest should not be blamed for the de­lay in the COVID test­ing but not­ed that it showed the im­por­tance of port work­ers’ jobs.

“If you are se­ri­ous let us think about it, about the COVID and the cruise ship peo­ple, won’t you find the time, an hour, to meet with the union,” he said.

“If you know all that and the union made a sim­ple re­quest, are you go­ing to stand up and say Tues­day or noth­ing.”

Sur­round­ed by port work­ers who were hold­ing plac­ards and play­ing in­stru­ments, An­nisette said they worked through the COVID-19 lock­down to en­sure the coun­try kept run­ning.

“While every­body was sleep­ing the front­line work­ers who would have en­sured that the hos­pi­tal get all the med­ica­tion that was com­ing from for­eign,” he said.

He said ap­prox­i­mate­ly 1,500-1,700 dock work­ers had not re­ceived salary in­creas­es since 2014. Oth­er than that, he said their work­ing con­di­tions were de­plorable and un­safe.

“We work mir­a­cles,” one pro­test­er shout­ed.

The work­ers said ar­eas on the port had pi­geon in­fes­ta­tion and they were work­ing with old ma­chin­ery and poor light­ing.

“We work­ing with ma­chines over 40 years old,” an­oth­er work­er said.