An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers

@guardian.co.tt

The cur­rent Port Au­thor­i­ty of T&T (PATT) board’s hands are tied when it comes to a 12 per cent in­crease for port work­ers, one of the sit­u­a­tions that led to strike ac­tion last week.

Speak­ing to the Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Port Au­thor­i­ty chair­man Lyle Alexan­der said the board that is sit­ting now was not in­volved in that process and had in­her­it­ed it from the pre­vi­ous board.

Alexan­der, who has been serv­ing since 2018 as chair­man, 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.

“As far as I am aware, it was agreed to and for­ward­ed for the ap­proval of the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer (CPO), or it was ap­proved sub­ject to the ap­proval of the CPO. To date, there has been no ap­proval for that par­tic­u­lar fig­ure and every­thing else is pub­lic knowl­edge,” he ex­plained.

Alexan­der not­ed that what has been de­scribed by SWW­TU pres­i­dent gen­er­al Michael An­nisette is in fact what the facts are.

Asked how the mat­ter was han­dled, the chair­man said, “You can’t not give cred­it to the em­ploy­ees and the union as well for the way we have been treat­ing this mat­ter. I cer­tain­ly ap­pre­ci­ate that lev­el of ma­tu­ri­ty in deal­ing with our is­sues and, of course, we are hu­man and from time to time the frus­tra­tion will rear its head and that’s what I think hap­pened last week.”

Guardian Me­dia was ad­vised that the Hu­man Re­source Ad­vi­so­ry Com­mit­tee (HRAC), which is a sub-com­mit­tee of the Cab­i­net with the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for mon­i­tor­ing wage and salary ne­go­ti­a­tions in the pub­lic sec­tor, was the body in charge of the process.

How­ev­er, con­tact­ed on the is­sue, HRAC com­mit­tee mem­ber, Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion Allyson West, said the best per­son to get an up­date about the in­crease from was the CPO. West did not con­firm whether the mat­ter was be­fore the sub-com­mit­tee.

In ex­plain­ing how the process works gen­er­al­ly, though, she said a de­ci­sion comes from the com­mit­tee but goes back to the CPO, who is sec­re­tary to the com­mit­tee, for ac­tion.

Guardian Me­dia reached out to the CPO’s Of­fice yes­ter­day but was told no com­ment was forth­com­ing at this time.

Last week, over 1,000 work­ers took strike at the Port of Port-of-Spain due, in part, to what An­nisette said was the board’s de­ci­sion to re­nege on the 12 per cent salary in­crease and health and safe­ty is­sues. He said while they signed off on a 12 per cent in­crease with the man­age­ment, the Gov­ern­ment was now re­fus­ing it.

Pub­lic Pri­vate Part­ner­ship up­date

Mean­while, on the is­sue of the Pub­lic Pri­vate Part­ner­ship (PPP) plan for the Port Au­thor­i­ty, board chair­man Alexan­der said the au­thor­i­ty is now in the process of struc­tur­ing the Re­quest for Pro­pos­als (RFP).

“I am op­ti­mistic that it will be out, it is al­ways tick­lish to put a date on that. But it will be out be­fore the end of 2024. Be­fore the last quar­ter of 2024,” he said.

Last year in an in­ter­view with the Busi­ness Guardian, Alexan­der said the PPP re­struc­tur­ing process was launched in Oc­to­ber 2022 and is be­ing done in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Gov­ern­ment’s ad­vi­sor, the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank (IDB).

“An agree­ment has been signed be­tween the Gov­ern­ment and IDB to take the project for­ward and the next thing that has to be an­nounced is the con­sul­tant that would be work­ing for the IDB to help us build the Re­quest for Pro­pos­als (RFP),” the chair­man re­vealed then.

He could not say how long the de­lays about the RFP will take, as this is be­ing han­dled by the IDB.

Alexan­der not­ed that all the analy­ses have in­di­cat­ed that the project po­ten­tial­ly is a US$200 mil­lion in­vest­ment over some time.