The Joint Cham­bers are call­ing on the Gov­ern­ment to ur­gent­ly re­solve the on­go­ing in­dus­tri­al ac­tion caus­ing se­vere dis­rup­tions at the Port of Port-of-Spain. The Amer­i­can Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce (AM­CHAM T&T), the En­er­gy Cham­ber, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce (T&T Cham­ber), and the Trinidad and To­ba­go Man­u­fac­tur­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA) is­sued a joint state­ment yes­ter­day, crit­i­cis­ing the Gov­ern­ment’s in­ac­tion in what they de­scribe as a na­tion­al cri­sis at a peak time for ship­ping ac­tiv­i­ty.

“To re­it­er­ate, the ex­ten­sive de­lays at the port are neg­a­tive­ly af­fect­ing port rev­enue; ves­sel by­pass­es; in­creased de­ten­tion fees and haulage rates; de­liv­ery of raw ma­te­ri­als for pro­duc­tion; and the cost of pro­duc­tion and of fin­ished goods. Ul­ti­mate­ly, the cit­i­zens of Trinidad and To­ba­go will be se­vere­ly af­fect­ed by the fail­ure, thus far, to come to a time­ly res­o­lu­tion,” the cham­bers stat­ed.

The cham­bers al­so not­ed a trend of port protests oc­cur­ring on Wednes­days, one day be­fore the typ­i­cal re-stock­ing on Thurs­days and Fri­days.

“This has the ef­fect of ex­ac­er­bat­ing an al­ready un­sus­tain­able sit­u­a­tion that is crip­pling busi­ness­es of all sizes and de­lay­ing de­liv­ery of Christ­mas in­ven­to­ry. Sig­nif­i­cant eco­nom­ic con­straints–par­tic­u­lar­ly the grow­ing chal­lenges in the avail­abil­i­ty of for­eign ex­change–make it im­per­a­tive that we do not con­tin­ue to com­pro­mise our na­tion­al sup­ply chain, as this in­hibits our pro­duc­tive ca­pac­i­ty and ul­ti­mate­ly de­ters our abil­i­ty to gen­er­ate ex­port rev­enue and im­pact the liveli­hoods of em­ploy­ees and their fam­i­lies.”

This comes as dock work­ers main­tain their stand­off with the Port Au­thor­i­ty over un­re­solved wage ne­go­ti­a­tions and poor work­ing con­di­tions.

Yes­ter­day, on­ly one of eight tire gantry cranes was op­er­a­tional, re­sult­ing in de­lays for 20 pri­vate trucks await­ing de­liv­er­ies. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, no ship-to-shore cranes were in use, leav­ing a Mediter­ranean Ship­ping Com­pa­ny ves­sel un­able to load or of­fload 1,800 con­tain­ers. The Port Au­thor­i­ty not­ed that op­er­a­tions were con­tin­u­ing for emp­ty con­tain­er de­liv­er­ies, the One Stop Bar­rel Shop, com­mer­cial LCL car­go, and au­to­mo­biles.

At a news con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, Sea­men and Wa­ter­front Work­ers Trade Union (SWW­TU) pres­i­dent gen­er­al Michael An­nisette said that 1,300 port work­ers are de­mand­ing a 12% salary in­crease for 2014 to 2017. He fur­ther re­spond­ed to con­cerns from busi­ness own­ers, say­ing if they are con­cerned about their bot­tom line, that’s not the union’s prob­lem.

“Who was con­cerned about their Christ­mas? Whether it was bleak, whether they could sup­ply food for their chil­dren?” he asked.

Port Au­thor­i­ty Chair­man Lyle Alexan­der ac­knowl­edged the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty’s con­cerns but stat­ed that any gov­ern­ment in­ter­ven­tion was ul­ti­mate­ly up to the ad­min­is­tra­tion, ex­press­ing hope for a res­o­lu­tion.

An­nisette said the SWW­TU would join forces with the Joint Trade Union Move­ment to sup­port dock work­ers, along with the Trinidad and To­ba­go Postal Work­ers Union in a show of sol­i­dar­i­ty at the Ari­ma Post Of­fice this morn­ing.

Dr Row­ley and Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert could not be reached for com­ment.