Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Op­er­a­tions at the Port of Port-of-Spain re­turned to nor­mal yes­ter­day, but there are con­cerns that in­dus­tri­al ac­tion over the past few days could re­sult in high­er prices and short­ages. Port work­ers had tak­en in­dus­tri­al ac­tion over wage ne­go­ti­a­tions and health and safe­ty is­sues, dis­rupt­ing sev­er­al op­er­a­tions.

An email sent to stake­hold­ers not­ed that as of 7 am yes­ter­day, all op­er­a­tional ar­eas at the port were at nor­mal work­force lev­els and the man­age­ment team was work­ing dili­gent­ly to clear a back­log of ves­sels and con­tain­ers as quick­ly as pos­si­ble.

There were long lines at the en­trance to the con­tain­er ter­mi­nal on Wright­son Road yes­ter­day, as de­liv­ery op­er­a­tions re­sumed fol­low­ing a five-day go-slow. This caused some traf­fic con­ges­tion head­ing in­to the cap­i­tal.

Sources said the in­dus­tri­al ac­tion af­fect­ed two ship­ping lines, pre­vent­ing ves­sels from of­fload­ing and load­ing goods. This af­fect­ed the On­col­o­gy Cen­tre at the Min­istry of Health, as equip­ment shipped from the Unit­ed States was stuck at the port.

In his con­tri­bu­tion to the Bud­get de­bate yes­ter­day, Health Min­is­ter Ter­rance Deyals­ingh said the min­istry was “work­ing as­sid­u­ous­ly” to re­solve the is­sue.

As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go Hauliers vice pres­i­dent Apol­lo Ar­joon said while the re­open­ing was a re­lief for con­sumers, he fore­sees chal­lenges ahead.

“I would ad­vise peo­ple to start bulk buy­ing be­cause what hap­pened dur­ing the Unit­ed States strike will trick­le down in­to the Caribbean.

“Ship­ping lines come down here, and the con­tain­ers are of­floaded and then re­loaded on­to oth­er ves­sels bound for the Caribbean. If there’s an in­crease in cost at any point, it will even­tu­al­ly af­fect us here,” he said.

“With the port in Trinidad cur­rent­ly fac­ing is­sues, there are ex­ces­sive de­mur­rage and port rent charges. If port rents are not waived, the de­mur­rage adds a heavy cost. So yes, I be­lieve it’s in­evitable that prices are go­ing to rise.”

In a re­lease on Tues­day, the T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA) warned that the re­cent in­dus­tri­al ac­tion could cause a near­ly one-month de­lay in re­triev­ing goods and if the sit­u­a­tion is not ad­dressed, it will lead to in­creased prices in the Christ­mas and Car­ni­val sea­sons.

Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce (CCIC) vice pres­i­dent Dr Vaalmik­ki Ar­joon yes­ter­day ex­pressed deep con­cern about de­lays at the port re­sult­ing from the in­dus­tri­al ac­tion and the clo­sure of the Con­tain­er Ex­am­i­na­tion Sec­tion (CES).

“It is cur­rent­ly tak­ing weeks to get an ap­point­ment with cus­toms to vis­it premis­es to clear car­go and dur­ing this wait time, im­porters must pay ad­di­tion­al rent and de­mur­rage, as the con­tain­er can­not be re­leased un­til cus­toms is ready for in­spec­tion,” he said.

Ar­joon added, “The ab­sence of crane and oth­er equip­ment op­er­a­tors has sig­nif­i­cant­ly af­fect­ed the load­ing and un­load­ing of con­tain­ers from ship­ping ves­sels. This has led to car­go be­ing strand­ed on ship­ping ves­sels, wors­en­ing the al­ready ex­tend­ed time­lines for clear­ing im­ports. To mit­i­gate de­lays, many im­porters are pay­ing ex­tra for cus­toms over­time in an ef­fort to ac­cess their car­go and lessen the al­ready bur­den­some dis­rup­tions to busi­ness op­er­a­tions. What is al­so pe­cu­liar is that the CES fees must still be paid by im­porters, de­spite the CES not be­ing op­er­a­tional.”

The CCIC is call­ing on the au­thor­i­ties to ur­gent­ly ad­dress this crit­i­cal is­sue.

“We rec­om­mend that the Gov­ern­ment im­me­di­ate­ly re­duce port rental and de­mur­rage charges to ease the fi­nan­cial bur­den on im­porters. They al­so need to has­ten the pri­vati­sa­tion of the port pro­posed in 2020, as such is­sues can be avoid­ed with a pri­vate port op­er­a­tor. We al­so stress the need for prompt res­o­lu­tion of the CES clo­sure and in­dus­tri­al ac­tion to re­store ef­fi­cient port op­er­a­tions and safe­guard the com­pet­i­tive­ness of the pri­vate sec­tor,” Ar­joon said.

Calls to Min­is­ter of Trade and In­dus­try Paula Gopee Scoon and Min­is­ter of Works and Trans­port Ro­han Sinanan went unan­swered yes­ter­day.

Sea­men and Wa­ter­front Work­ers Trade Union pres­i­dent Michael An­nisette was al­so un­avail­able for com­ment.