An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

The adop­tion of a Pub­lic Pri­vate Part­ner­ship (PPP) to take over the man­age­ment of the car­go-han­dling op­er­a­tions at the port of Port-of-Spain is not ex­pect­ed to af­fect the em­ploy­ment of work­ers at the Port of Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go (PATT).

The com­ment came from PATT chair­man Lyle Alexan­der in an in­ter­view with the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian on Fri­day.

This fol­lows the In­ter­Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank (IDB) and the Glob­al In­fra­struc­ture Fa­cil­i­ty (GIF) an­nounce­ment last Thurs­day, that is sup­port­ing T&T in the de­vel­op­ment of a US$270 mil­lion pub­lic-pri­vate part­ner­ship that will im­prove car­go ser­vices at the port of Port-of-Spain, boost­ing trade and en­hanc­ing the coun­try’s com­pet­i­tive­ness.

IDB said, “The PPP is ex­pect­ed to in­vest up to US$270 mil­lion aim­ing to boost port pro­duc­tiv­i­ty by more than 50 per cent.

“The new pri­vate op­er­a­tor will man­age all the port’s car­go-han­dling ac­tiv­i­ties, rang­ing from gen­er­al car­go op­er­a­tions and ter­mi­nal han­dling to weigh­ing and reefer ser­vices.”

It not­ed that T&T’s Port Au­thor­i­ty has is­sued a pub­lic no­tice to com­pa­nies in­ter­est­ed in par­tic­i­pat­ing in the project ten­der, adding that the project has gen­er­at­ed sig­nif­i­cant in­ter­est from pri­vate sec­tor par­tic­i­pants, who have un­til Ju­ly 15 to reg­is­ter.

In the in­ter­view, Alexan­der said, at the mo­ment, there’s no ex­pec­ta­tion that work­ers will be af­fect­ed as a re­sult of the PPP.

“The de­ci­sion or the in­ten­tion is that no work­er will be af­fect­ed pure­ly be­cause of the PPP project.”

As it per­tains to what the work­ers are say­ing about this move, on whether it is a step in the right di­rec­tion, the PATT chair­man said the re­sponse is one of un­der­stand­ing and a com­mit­ment to work to­geth­er to see this PPP come to life.

“We all un­der­stand the val­ue that the PPP will bring to our op­er­a­tions and our re­turns and our per­for­mance as well. So, from that point of view, we have been told that the em­ploy­ees will sup­port and work with us go­ing for­ward,” he de­tailed.

Union con­cerned

The Sea­men and Wa­ter­front Work­ers’ Trade Union (SWW­TU), which rep­re­sents the work­ers at the Port Au­thor­i­ty, said not enough in­for­ma­tion is be­ing pro­vid­ed with re­spect to the PPP.

Kim Richard­son, trustee and sec­re­tary for the month­ly paid port work­ers, said the union met with the man­age­ment last month, but the in­for­ma­tion was vague about the process.

Richard­son high­light­ed that they were told by man­age­ment it was invit­ing a US$200 mil­lion in­vest­ment, but the IDB re­lease on Thurs­day said US$270 mil­lion in­vest­ment.

“That con­flict­ing in­for­ma­tion is caus­ing some un­cer­tain­ty.”

On the top­ic of job se­cu­ri­ty, she not­ed that while man­age­ment in­di­cat­ed that work­ers would not be af­fect­ed, “it does not of­fer the se­cu­ri­ty they think it does.”

“All of us are still con­cerned about job se­cu­ri­ty, as in­for­ma­tion about the PPP is not be­ing giv­en on a time­ly ba­sis to the work­ers and union. The union has con­tin­u­ous­ly ex­pressed that we are will­ing to come to the ta­ble to dis­cuss ways that op­er­a­tions could be stream­lined,” Richard­son said.

Three Port Au­thor­i­ty work­ers who did not want their names to be called, said even though man­age­ment is say­ing no work­ers, there is still an un­easy feel­ing among their peers, as agree­ment can change lat­er down.

Al­so, the sec­re­tary for the month­ly paid work­ers said the 12 per cent wage in­crease for the 2014-2017 ne­go­ti­a­tion years still re­mains un­set­tled and the union is hop­ing that this can be ad­dressed.

In Feb­ru­ary, the work­ers protest­ed over this is­sue, when Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed Alexan­der, the Port Au­thor­i­ty chair­man, he said the board’s hands were tied when it comes to a 12 per cent in­crease.

Alexan­der said be­fore his board came in­to of­fice, there was a dis­cus­sion be­tween the pre­vi­ous board and the Sea­men and Wa­ter­front Work­ers’ Union (SWW­TU), and there was an agree­ment that in­clud­ed the de­vel­op­ment of some new work­ing prac­tices and some dis­cus­sion around the set­tle­ment of a 12 per cent wage hike.

Suc­cess­ful bid­der to in­vest US$270M

Shed­ding light on the PPP process the PATT chair­man ex­plained that it ex­pects the in­vestors to agree to in­vest US$270 mil­lion.

“In oth­er words, once they come in and agree to do it, we will give them a con­ces­sion for I think it’s prob­a­bly some 25 years so that they can make back the mon­ey. But they will have op­er­a­tional tar­gets to meet based on our re­quire­ments. So, once they agree, they pro­vide the mon­ey, we point them in a di­rec­tion of how to go, and hope­ful­ly, they will stick to that.

“Af­ter 25 years or what­ev­er pe­ri­od it is, they would have re­ceived a re­turn on their in­vest­ment. The in­vestor moves out and gives us back the Port in a par­tic­u­lar con­di­tion that will be pre­scribed, or the in­vestor asks for an ex­ten­sion, and they con­tin­ue for an­oth­er pe­ri­od,” Alexan­der out­lined.

Alexan­der high­light­ed that the in­vestor has to be pre­pared to have that kind of mon­ey to in­vest and en­sure that all the tar­gets are met with­in the agree­ment.

Speak­ing about the in­vestors that have shown in­ter­est so far, he said while it can­not be re­vealed at this stage who the in­vestors are, he was im­pressed to see in­ter­na­tion­al play­ers along with lo­cal ones.

“The lo­cal in­ter­est is sur­pris­ing.”

Alexan­der not­ed that by the end of the year, PATT ex­pects the in­vestor to come on board.

Con­cern­ing a pri­vate en­ti­ty tak­ing over car­go han­dling at the port, the ques­tion was asked what will be­come of the Port Au­thor­i­ty, Alexan­der said it will re­main as an or­gan­i­sa­tion.

“There’s still op­tions in terms of what that could look like. But cer­tain­ly, from a reg­u­la­to­ry point of view, the Au­thor­i­ty can be­come more reg­u­la­to­ry than any­thing else,” he added.

Gov­ern­ment man­date

In his 2021 bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert said the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port would be man­dat­ed to take im­me­di­ate steps to ra­tio­nalise the op­er­a­tions of the Port Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go and to in­tro­duce a pri­vate sec­tor op­er­a­tor in­to the port han­dling op­er­a­tions. The Min­istry of Works and Trans­port was sup­posed to start the process of in­tro­duc­ing a pri­vate sec­tor op­er­a­tor by the end of fis­cal 2021.

The pro­pos­al to pri­va­tise the car­go-han­dling as­pects of the port of Port-of-Spain would leave the fer­ry ser­vice to the Trinidad and To­ba­go In­ter-Is­land Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed and the lands for the Port-of-Spain In­fra­struc­ture Com­pa­ny.

In the 2021 bud­get speech, Im­bert said: “Pub­lic port agen­cies have been mov­ing away from the ser­vice port mod­el un­der which na­tion­al port au­thor­i­ties pro­vide all com­mer­cial ser­vices as well as reg­u­la­to­ry func­tions; but in­creas­ing­ly have been util­is­ing the land­lord mod­el. The Gov­ern­ment has de­cid­ed to adopt this ap­proach with the Port Au­thor­i­ty re­tain­ing its reg­u­la­to­ry and as­set man­age­ment func­tions, but with man­age­r­i­al, op­er­a­tional and fi­nan­cial re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for com­mer­cial ac­tiv­i­ties such as ter­mi­nals and equip­ment in the port area un­der a new in­vestor.”

Im­bert added that steps will al­so be tak­en to en­sure that the op­er­a­tions at Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Port De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion are con­sis­tent with the op­er­a­tions of the port han­dling op­er­a­tions of the Port of Port of Spain.