The Trinidad and To­ba­go Man­u­fac­tur­ers' As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA) says the re­cent in­dus­tri­al ac­tion by work­ers at the Port of Port-of-Spain will re­sult in a close to one-month de­lay in re­triev­ing goods from the port.

Last week, work­ers walked off the job at least twice in protest over a range of is­sues, in­clud­ing health and safe­ty con­cerns and stalled wage ne­go­ti­a­tions, which dis­rupt­ed op­er­a­tions.

In a re­lease yes­ter­day, the TTMA said the dis­rup­tions have left man­u­fac­tur­ers, ex­porters and traders frus­trat­ed over the ex­pect­ed two-to-three-week de­lays be­cause of work­ers en­gag­ing in “sick-out” ac­tion, which re­sult­ed in low work­er turnout and down­time at the port.

“At this time, there are no cur­rent con­tain­er ves­sel op­er­a­tions and no con­tain­er ter­mi­nal op­er­a­tions for the re­ceipt and de­liv­ery of con­tain­ers, a dire sit­u­a­tion for man­u­fac­tur­ers and traders,” the TTMA said.

The TTMA warned that if the sit­u­a­tion is not ad­dressed, it will lead to in­creased prices go­ing in­to the Christ­mas and Car­ni­val sea­sons, as the de­lay ham­pers the avail­abil­i­ty of raw ma­te­ri­als re­quired for pro­duc­tion.

“TTMA is ask­ing for in­ter­ven­tion by the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties, in­clud­ing se­nior port man­agers and the Gov­ern­ment, to in­ter­vene and have the mat­ter re­solved in a time­ly man­ner, as well as con­sid­er the waiv­ing of port rent and de­mur­rage in­curred by af­fect­ed busi­ness­es.”

The strike ac­tion last week was not the first for the year by port work­ers. Ear­li­er this year, 1,000 work­ers walked off the job, giv­ing port man­age­ment sev­en days to ad­dress health and safe­ty is­sues and agree to a 12 per cent wage in­crease.

The work­ers’ ac­tion mir­rored a strike in the US where near­ly 50,000 port work­ers downed tools, dis­rupt­ing op­er­a­tions on the East­ern Seaboard and Gulf Coast ports. The stop­page af­fect­ed the flow of im­ports and ex­ports.