Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan has de­nied claims of a back­log at the Port of Port-of-Spain, em­pha­sis­ing that op­er­a­tions are pro­ceed­ing as sched­uled.

Ac­cord­ing to in­for­ma­tion from the Port Au­thor­i­ty of T&T, im­port con­tain­ers are be­ing processed ef­fi­cient­ly, and there were more avail­able ap­point­ments for col­lec­tion than cus­tomers ar­riv­ing to col­lect their con­tain­ers.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Sinanan not­ed that while some busi­ness­es were de­lay­ing col­lec­tion to cre­ate space in their ware­hous­es and to ac­com­mo­date im­porters, the port re­mained open on week­ends for de­liv­er­ies.

Speak­ing on CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew yes­ter­day, vice chair­man of the Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber of Com­merce and In­dus­try,  Dr Vaalmik­ki Ar­joon, had asked for Cab­i­net to step in to help ease some of the bur­den to busi­ness­es re­sult­ing from the cur­rent bot­tle­neck and back­log at the port and de­lays in hav­ing car­go cleared.

Sim­i­lar claims were made by at least two oth­er busi­ness cham­bers last week.

How­ev­er, Sinanan said, “I am a bit con­fused as to where this is com­ing from that there is a back­log of im­port­ed con­tain­ers on the port.”

The In­dus­tri­al Court in­ter­vened in an im­passe be­tween port work­ers and port’s man­age­ment last month, grant­i­ng an in­junc­tion on No­vem­ber 19 or­der­ing port work­ers to de­sist from in­dus­tri­al ac­tion and to re­sume du­ties im­me­di­ate­ly.

Sinanan de­scribed the court’s de­ci­sion back then as a “vic­to­ry for Trinidad and To­ba­go,” high­light­ing its im­por­tance in restor­ing op­er­a­tions and sta­bil­i­ty.
He said the port was now ful­ly op­er­a­tional and ready to meet the de­mands of im­porters and busi­ness­es, en­sur­ing that the sup­ply chain re­mained un­in­ter­rupt­ed.