Jesse Ramdeo

Peo­ple hop­ing to pur­chase Christ­mas gifts on­line are be­ing ad­vised to have a sec­ond plan, as the glob­al shock waves of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic con­tin­ue to rip­ple through the ship­ping in­dus­try.

Cus­tomers con­tin­ue to re­port de­lays in their de­liv­er­ies and couri­er com­pa­nies are warn­ing of longer waits due to set­backs.

Cus­tomers say couri­er com­pa­nies have been telling them they should have been or­der­ing their gifts on­line weeks ago to es­cape the an­tic­i­pat­ed Christ­mas back­log.

Guardian Me­dia reached out to Ship­ping As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go head Hay­den Al­leyne, who urged peo­ple to place their or­ders “im­me­di­ate­ly.”

Ac­cord­ing to Al­leyne, al­though the hol­i­day sea­son is months away, there’s al­ready a lot of ner­vous­ness about get­ting gifts to their des­ti­na­tions on time.

“This year, with the dam­age the pan­dem­ic has done to the sup­ply chain, the num­ber of de­lays that have been caused by COVID-19, I think it is with an abun­dance of cau­tion some of these couri­er com­pa­nies will be telling their cus­tomers you may not get your car­go in time for Christ­mas if you or­der now,” he said.

Head of Ezone Couri­ers, Paul Pan­tin, said the ship­ping sys­tem is ex­pect­ed to be over­whelmed. He too warned shop­pers to brace for de­lays un­like any ex­pe­ri­enced be­fore.

“It is a good idea to try and or­der a lit­tle ear­li­er for Christ­mas from two per­spec­tives - one, the sup­ply chain may not be able to get it to us or you (cus­tomers) as quick­ly as it has been in the past and sec­ond­ly, there prob­a­bly will be con­tin­ued de­lays lo­cal­ly with the clear­ance of items, whether you clear it from ocean or air ex­press.”

Pan­tin be­lieves swift Gov­ern­ment in­ter­ven­tion could be a time­ly gift for many.

“If we can come to an agree­ment soon and we have been talk­ing to Cus­toms and we have been giv­ing our ideas and con­sul­ta­tion, if they can have an agree­ment soon there should not be this con­tin­ued de­lay.”

He said the couri­er and de­liv­ery ser­vices in­dus­try has been grap­pling to op­er­ate with lim­it­ed re­sources. In Jan­u­ary, stake­hold­ers com­plained about the back­logs caused by the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the Asy­cu­da sys­tem. The au­to­mat­ed da­ta en­try pro­gramme was blamed for the bot­tle­neck­ing of goods which sub­se­quent­ly im­pact­ed trade and the econ­o­my.