Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan is ex­pect­ing nor­mal op­er­a­tions at the Port of Port-of-Spain to­day.

The min­is­ter said he was not will­ing to com­ment on the out­stand­ing wage ne­go­ti­a­tions and the sub­se­quent in­dus­tri­al ac­tion that had dis­rupt­ed op­er­a­tions at the port. In­stead, yes­ter­day, he gave an up­date on the port’s sta­tus at Ar­rive Alive’s com­mem­o­ra­tion of World Day of Re­mem­brance for Road Traf­fic Vic­tims at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah.

“I could give you the as­sur­ance that the last re­port I had last night is that all back­logs at the port have been dealt with, so the port is back to nor­mal. Hope­ful­ly, we should not get any, you know, sort of demon­stra­tion or protest ac­tion again. If once that doesn’t hap­pen, as of to­mor­row, the re­port is back to nor­mal. No back­logs any­thing at all,” said Min­is­ter Sinanan.

The in­dus­tri­al ac­tion by work­ers backed by their union, the Sea­men and Wa­ter­front Work­ers Trade Union (SWW­TU) is re­lat­ed to the ne­go­ti­a­tions for the 2014 to 2017 pe­ri­od. Pres­i­dent Gen­er­al of the union Michael An­nisette had stressed the work­ers were not just protest­ing for a promised 12 per cent in­crease, but for the im­ple­men­ta­tion of a frame­work agree­ment sug­gest­ed to them that would im­prove op­er­a­tions at the fa­cil­i­ty. That agree­ment, An­nisette claimed, would see a re­vi­sion of the cur­rent sys­tem, which clas­si­fied week­end work as an over­time pay­ment, and as a re­sult, would save the port $100 mil­lion in salaries.

Last 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 wrote the gov­ern­ment ask­ing for ur­gent in­ter­ven­tion in­to the mat­ter, prompt­ing the Na­tion­al Trade Union Cen­tre (NATUC) to re­spond that mak­ing such a state­ment could fur­ther fan the flames of in­dus­tri­al ac­tion.

On Fri­day, Labour Min­is­ter Stephen Mc Clashie called for good sense to pre­vail. He al­so re­mind­ed that there was a con­tin­ued need for di­a­logue. But the min­is­ter said if the sit­u­a­tion war­rant­ed Gov­ern­ment’s in­ter­ven­tion, they would step in.