While things are back to nor­mal af­ter al­most two months of protest on the Port of Port of Spain, there are some de­lays on the ex­port side.

This was con­firmed by Port Au­thor­i­ty (PATT) com­mis­sion­er and chair­man Lyle Alexan­der to Busi­ness Guardian on Mon­day.

Alexan­der said the de­lays in ex­ports are be­ing worked on, but it al­so de­pends on the ships to move car­goes of ex­port goods/prod­ucts.

On the im­port sec­tion, he said there are no de­lays.

“What­ev­er de­liv­er­ies are there on the port, now it’s ready for de­liv­ery. What is hap­pen­ing is some peo­ple are ask­ing for more time to clear, while some peo­ple are not keep­ing their ap­point­ments.”

A source at the Port told Busi­ness Guardian that some work­ers are on a go slow, as the rep­re­sent­ing union, the Sea­men and Wa­ter­front Work­ers Trade Union (SWW­TU), is at odds with the Port Au­thor­i­ty over wage in­creas­es and pro­pos­als aimed at im­ple­ment­ing best prac­tices at the port.

“We sup­posed to be op­er­at­ing at least 20 con­tain­ers go­ing on or off the ships per hour and that is not hap­pen­ing. Things are get­ting pushed back, be­cause if a ves­sel is to be cleared in two days it is now be­ing cleared in three days. So in oth­er words they are work­ing to rule. That’s a de­lay for every­one,” the Port source dis­closed.

Alexan­der con­firmed that the union and work­ers re­ject­ed the 4 per cent of­fer by the gov­ern­ment and are stick­ing to the 12 per cent.|

SWWT­TU pres­i­dent gen­er­al Michael Anisette told Guardian Me­dia two weeks ago that the agree­ment would have been ben­e­fi­cial to all par­ties.

“With the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the 12 per cent, which was a com­po­nent of the frame­work agree­ment, the port would have saved over $100 mil­lion in over­time costs from 2015 to now be­cause we were elim­i­nat­ing over­time. Over­time pay­ments are now 40 per cent of the port’s wage bill. That’s a fright­en­ing fig­ure in any in­dus­try.”

He added, “On­ly 12 per cent with­in the frame­work agree­ment places us in a po­si­tion where the foun­da­tion is sol­id, al­low­ing the port to kick off mean­ing­ful­ly and be­come im­me­di­ate­ly com­pet­i­tive and pro­duc­tive.”

Oth­er woes on the port

Speak­ing about the reper­cus­sions that the de­lays cause, Fyz­abad Cham­ber of Com­merce vice pres­i­dent An­tho­ny Da Cos­ta said it usu­al­ly takes sev­en days to clear im­port­ed goods once its un­stuffed from the con­tain­er.

“If you pass that pe­ri­od of sev­en days, as a re­sult of protest, or Cus­tom and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion, you have to pay ware­house stor­age fees. What hap­pens is you end up hav­ing to pay a ware­house fee and that ware­house fee some­times adds up to thou­sands of dol­lars. Some­times the busi­nessper­son buffers this cost and does not let it trick­le down to the con­sumer,” Da Cos­ta ex­plained.

He in­di­cat­ed that bro­kers have said not to bring in goods at this time, as it would not be cleared in a time­ly fash­ion, which would re­sult in cost over­runs from the ware­house.

Down­town Own­ers and Mer­chants As­so­ci­a­tion (DO­MA) pres­i­dent Gre­go­ry Aboud said the protest not on­ly im­pacts neg­a­tive­ly on im­ports but al­so on the ex­port mar­ket, with many car­go con­tain­ers wait­ing to go out to var­i­ous des­ti­na­tions in South and Cen­tral Amer­i­ca still strand­ed in Port-of-Spain.

 “We have had re­ports from sev­er­al is­lands, where they have been wait­ing on trans­ship­ment car­go to come from Trinidad with var­i­ous ship­ping lines. While I would not want to name those lines now, three ma­jor lines com­ing in­to Trinidad have had trans­ship­ment car­go on the Port of Port-of-Spain to go back up to var­i­ous is­lands, in­clud­ing Bar­ba­dos, St Vin­cent, Do­mini­ca, the French is­lands, An­tigua. All those coun­tries in the Caribbean have been wait­ing for car­go which iss strand­ed in Port-of-Spain by the dis­rup­tion of the port.”

 Say­ing he be­lieves that im­pact has been more far-reach­ing than what is be­ing told, Aboud ad­mit­ted to al­so be­ing con­cerned about the lack of re­ac­tion to the port dis­rup­tion by some busi­ness own­ers.

“The on­ly, or the most star­tling as­pect of this, is that there was so much si­lence by those who were im­pact­ed so neg­a­tive­ly and I might want to al­so say to them, to those who were af­fect­ed, that si­lence will nev­er pro­tect you.”

Aboud not­ed that the protest and work to rule had a very neg­a­tive con­se­quence on the op­er­a­tional ef­fi­cien­cy of the Trinidad and To­ba­go econ­o­my.  

“I feel bad­ly to get in­volved in any dis­cus­sions re­gard­ing re­mu­ner­a­tion or terms and con­di­tions of em­ploy­ment or any­thing of the sort. It’s not our place to be in­volved in those ne­go­ti­a­tions. But what we can do is to re­port on the con­se­quences that have be­fall­en the Trinidad and To­ba­go econ­o­my. And there is noth­ing pos­i­tive to be said in that re­gard about what has tak­en place. We have been dealt sev­er­al bad blows, and there is no short­age of com­ments com­ing from busi­ness­es call­ing to see and to com­plain about the im­pact it had on them,” he de­tailed.

Just re­cent­ly the Guyana Man­u­fac­tur­ing and Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (GM­SA) ex­pressed grave con­cern re­gard­ing the on­go­ing in­dus­tri­al ac­tion which se­vere­ly dis­rupt­ed re­gion­al trade and im­pact­ed busi­ness­es in Guyana.

“This strike and now ‘go-slow op­er­a­tion,’ which has been per­sist­ing for over two months, has caused sig­nif­i­cant de­lays in the clear­ance of con­tain­ers car­ry­ing raw ma­te­ri­als and time-sen­si­tive goods. As a re­sult, man­u­fac­tur­ers and busi­ness­es in Guyana are in­cur­ring sub­stan­tial fi­nan­cial loss­es, par­tic­u­lar­ly dur­ing this crit­i­cal Christ­mas sea­son when im­port vol­umes are sig­nif­i­cant­ly high­er,” said the GS­MA.  

“These de­lays have al­so con­tributed to price in­creas­es for con­sumer goods, in­clud­ing ba­sic ne­ces­si­ties, as busi­ness­es are forced to nav­i­gate high­er costs as­so­ci­at­ed with sup­ply chain dis­rup­tions.

T&T plays a cru­cial role as a trans­ship­ment hub for the Caribbean, fa­cil­i­tat­ing the move­ment of goods to Guyana and coun­tries in the Caribbean. Pro­longed dis­rup­tions at its ports are jeop­ar­dis­ing re­gion­al sup­ply chains, with dire im­pli­ca­tions for busi­ness­es and con­sumers alike,” GM­SA lament­ed.

In­dus­tri­al ac­tion at the Port of Port-of-Spain es­ca­lat­ed in Au­gust 2024 and spread to the Scar­bor­ough port in Oc­to­ber.

In No­vem­ber 2024, four of the coun­try’s largest busi­ness cham­bers called on the gov­ern­ment to re­solve the on­go­ing in­dus­tri­al ac­tion. Some busi­ness lead­ers were con­cerned that the protests could be­come un­ten­able.

The Port Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go (PATT) re­ceived an in­junc­tion from the In­dus­tri­al Court on No­vem­ber 19, 2024 stop­ping the in­dus­tri­al ac­tion at the Port-of-Spain. The in­junc­tion or­dered the work­ers at the Port of Port-of-Spain to re­turn to work pend­ing the court’s hear­ing and de­ter­mi­na­tion of an in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions of­fense case.