Labour short­ages at the Port of Port of Spain con­tin­ue to cre­ate a night­mare for hauliers. On Tues­day, hauliers said the main or west­ern gate to the port re­mained closed be­cause main­te­nance crews did not come out to work. Prob­lems at the port be­gan last week when work­ers downed tools, cit­ing a range of is­sues, in­clud­ing health and safe­ty con­cerns and stalled wage ne­go­ti­a­tions, which dis­rupt­ed op­er­a­tions.

On Fri­day, work­ers re­turned to work, but on Mon­day the sit­u­a­tion re­vert­ed, and as a re­sult, the port is­sued a news re­lease on Mon­day evening stat­ing that be­cause of a re­duc­tion in labour, there were no op­er­a­tions at the con­tain­er ves­sel op­er­a­tions and at the con­tain­er ter­mi­nal op­er­a­tions.

The Cou­va Point Lisas Cham­ber (CPLCC) head, De­o­raj Ma­hase, said the Con­tain­er Ex­am­i­na­tion Sta­tion (CES) at the Port of Port of Spain was closed ap­prox­i­mate­ly five weeks ago due to a rat in­fes­ta­tion and re­mains closed.

Ma­hase said while there has been a good ef­fort by the au­thor­i­ties to re­lease con­tain­ers for de­liv­ery and ex­am­i­na­tion, the du­ra­tion of time for ap­point­ments is lengthy and caus­ing chal­lenges for bro­kers, im­porters, hauliers, and the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty. Ma­hase not­ed that CES fees are still be­ing charged, and while this may be ac­cord­ing to reg­u­la­tions, some lev­el of cour­tesy can be ex­tend­ed based on the present sit­u­a­tion.

Re­gard­ing the labour is­sues at the Port of Port of Spain, the CPLCC said this mat­ter is caus­ing fur­ther chal­lenges notwith­stand­ing the ef­forts by the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties to re­solve the sit­u­a­tion last week. He said the Cham­ber has been in­formed that the NAVIS Ter­mi­nal Op­er­at­ing Sys­tem was non-func­tion­al, cre­at­ing fur­ther chal­lenges to make ap­point­ments, process de­liv­er­ies, and check rent.

The As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T Hauliers (ATTH) said the in­dus­tri­al ac­tion has se­vere­ly com­pro­mised its mem­bers’ abil­i­ty to pro­vide es­sen­tial ser­vices, sig­nif­i­cant­ly im­pact­ing both im­port and ex­port op­er­a­tions. The ATTH stat­ed, “The strike has re­sult­ed in the in­abil­i­ty to load and of­fload full and emp­ty con­tain­ers, which is crit­i­cal to main­tain­ing the flow of goods.

The ab­sence of Rub­ber Tyred Gantry Cranes (RT­Gs) op­er­a­tions means that no ships are cur­rent­ly able to load or un­load their car­goes. Con­se­quent­ly, the op­er­a­tional stand­still is cre­at­ing a rip­ple ef­fect of dis­rup­tions to our clients and the broad­er sup­ply chain.

Our clients are di­rect­ly af­fect­ed, as they can­not re­trieve their im­port­ed con­tain­ers nor have their con­tain­ers processed and ex­port­ed. Such dis­rup­tions have im­me­di­ate con­se­quences on busi­ness op­er­a­tions and sup­ply chains, af­fect­ing the avail­abil­i­ty of goods in var­i­ous sec­tors.”

ATTH warned that pro­longed in­ter­rup­tions could lead to sig­nif­i­cant back­logs, im­pact­ing our na­tion’s trade com­mit­ments and po­ten­tial­ly in­cur­ring sub­stan­tial fi­nan­cial loss­es. The op­er­a­tional grid­lock may al­so ne­ces­si­tate al­ter­na­tive lo­gis­ti­cal arrange­ments, which could in­crease costs and de­lays.