Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

Pres­i­dent of the Sea­men and Wa­ter­front Work­ers Trade Union Michael An­nisette has warned that work­ers at the Scar­bor­ough Port are pre­pared to strike again if promis­es to have un­re­solved is­sues fixed are not kept. 

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia af­ter Tues­day’s protest over health and safe­ty and the re­trench­ment of 14 em­ploy­ees who re­port­ed­ly raised poor work­ing con­di­tion con­cerns, An­nisette clar­i­fied that while the Scar­bor­ough protest was not di­rect­ly linked to work­ers’ ac­tion at the Port of Port-of-Spain, it was sparked by the lay­off of work­ers who raised sim­i­lar com­plaints.

He added that a com­mit­ment had been made to reach an am­i­ca­ble so­lu­tion, but if an agree­ment is not achieved, op­er­a­tions at the Scar­bor­ough Port could be dis­rupt­ed in the com­ing days.

He said, “The work­ers took the de­ci­sion on the ba­sis of that com­mit­ment they will re­turn, but with the clear un­der­stand­ing that they are not pre­pared to ac­cept, like in the past where they agreed to ad­dress a mat­ter and it con­tin­ues un­abat­ed and there is no im­ple­men­ta­tion of the di­vi­sion ar­rived at with good faith.” 

Mean­while, the Chair­man of the To­ba­go Cham­ber, Cur­tis Williams, is call­ing on the port to have the is­sues re­solved.

He wor­ries these protests will harm the al­ready frag­ile econ­o­my.

He said, “Come meet with the nec­es­sary rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the unions and dis­cuss the way for­ward so that we don’t have this prob­lem. It’s Christ­mas time. Now is the time every­body want to stock up; No­vem­ber is the time we stock up for Christ­mas.”

Port Au­thor­i­ty chair­man Lyle Alexan­der told Guardian Me­dia the protest may have af­fect­ed op­er­a­tions yes­ter­day. 

“If peo­ple don’t work, there may have been. I don’t know how it would have been im­pact­ed; I don’t have the de­tails. I know the ves­sels ran as usu­al. I don’t know if any­thing may have hap­pened at the sheds. I don’t have a re­port on that im­pact.

“Things are not ful­ly back to nor­mal to­day. There were some op­er­a­tions af­fect­ed to­day, but most of them have been go­ing on.”

Mean­while, Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan told Guardian Me­dia the board and man­age­ment are deal­ing with those is­sues at the mo­ment.