JAN­NELLE BERNARD

Se­nior Re­porter

jan­nelle.bernard@cnc3.co.tt

With less than two weeks un­til Christ­mas Day, busi­ness­es are com­plain­ing of slow sales, in part be­cause their stocks are still caught up on the Port of Port-of-Spain, which is still work­ing to clear a back­log of con­tain­ers in the wake of re­cent protest ac­tion by work­ers.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, busi­ness own­ers from Port-of-Spain to San Fer­nan­do said al­though work­ers had re­turned to du­ty at the port, the dam­age had al­ready been done and Christ­mas sales had been neg­a­tive­ly im­pact­ed.

Down­town Own­ers and Mer­chants As­so­ci­a­tion (DO­MA) pres­i­dent Gre­go­ry Aboud said busi­ness own­ers are still feel­ing the ef­fects of the port shut­down, which start­ed in Oc­to­ber and was end­ed in No­vem­ber due to le­gal ac­tion by the Port Au­thor­i­ty of T&T. He said it had not on­ly im­pact­ed 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, which I would not want to name those lines now, but the three ma­jor lines com­ing in­to Trinidad have had trans­ship­ment car­go and on the port in Port-of-Spain to go back up to var­i­ous is­lands, in­clud­ing Bar­ba­dos, St Vin­cent, Do­mini­ca, the French is­lands, An­tigua and all those coun­tries in the Caribbean have been wait­ing for car­go which was 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.”

Mean­while, Greater San Fer­nan­do Area of Cham­ber of Com­merce pres­i­dent Ki­ran Singh said some busi­ness own­ers were now look­ing for­ward to Box­ing Day sales to make up for the Christ­mas sales deficit, not­ing Box­ing Day ac­tiv­i­ty may pos­si­bly sur­pass Christ­mas Eve sales as their main in­come earn­er for the sea­son.

How­ev­er, he is hop­ing that all con­tain­ers de­layed on the port will now be cleared in a time­ly man­ner.

“Now wasn’t the time to, lead­ing up to Christ­mas, to have work to rule and work stop­pages, be­cause this is when the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty earns the val­ue dol­lar that they have looked for­ward to for the en­tire year. At Christ­mas, we know it’s the busiest shop­ping pe­ri­od for the en­tire year. This is a cause for se­ri­ous con­cern, and we have to look for­ward to the Box­ing Day sale, which is a grow­ing phe­nom­e­non,” Singh said.

Echo­ing the sen­ti­ments of oth­er busi­ness cham­bers, Co­or­di­na­tor of the Con­fed­er­a­tion of Re­gion­al Busi­ness Cham­bers (CR­BC), Jai Lelad­hars­ingh, said busi­ness­es are still feel­ing the ef­fects of the port shut­down and it has led to a dis­ap­point­ing sea­son.

Lelad­hars­ingh said, “We are not get­ting the stock, we are not get­ting any­thing new to sell cus­tomers, peo­ple are not spend­ing mon­ey, and all of that ac­cu­mu­lat­ing is what is caus­ing a lot of prob­lems in the SME sec­tor right now. Be­cause we de­pend on Christ­mas for some sales, but noth­ing is hap­pen­ing at all, at all, at all.”

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day on the is­sue yes­ter­day, Port Au­thor­i­ty chair­man Lyle Alexan­der said op­er­a­tions were run­ning smooth­ly once again. How­ev­er, he said while the port is up and run­ning, it is un­der­stand­able that there will be is­sues giv­en what hap­pened.

Port work­ers have been protest­ing against the de­lay in wage ne­go­ti­a­tions and health and safe­ty is­sues for months. That came to a head in Au­gust, when work­ers walked off the job, caus­ing ma­jor dis­rup­tions. The au­thor­i­ty even­tu­al­ly took the mat­ter to the In­dus­tri­al Court and was grant­ed an in­ter­im in­junc­tion against the Sea­men and Wa­ter­front Work­ers Trade Union on No­vem­ber 19, forc­ing the work­ers back to the job.

This ac­tion was tak­en days af­ter four of T&T’s ma­jor busi­ness cham­bers – the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce, the T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA), the Amer­i­can Cham­ber of Com­merce (Am­cham) and the En­er­gy Cham­ber – called on Gov­ern­ment to step in to re­solve the im­passe at the Port of Port-of-Spain. The in­ter­im in­junc­tion will stand un­til Jan­u­ary 15, the date of the next hear­ing.