The on­go­ing im­passe at the Port of Port-of-Spain re­mains un­re­solved, caus­ing ma­jor dis­rup­tions to op­er­a­tions and ad­verse­ly af­fect­ing the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty. There seems to be no end in sight as nei­ther side has budged in the port pay dis­pute.

On Sun­day, Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan said that de­spite the dis­rup­tions, the port man­aged to han­dle all ex­port con­tain­ers and in­com­ing ship­ments over the week­end. He as­sured that port op­er­a­tions were back to nor­mal.

But that was short-lived as port ac­tiv­i­ties were sig­nif­i­cant­ly dis­rupt­ed yes­ter­day, with work­ers re­fus­ing to at­tend a sched­uled meet­ing with Port Au­thor­i­ty Chair­man Lyle Alexan­der at three lo­ca­tions in Port-of-Spain.

Work­ers gath­ered in­stead at the Sea­men and Wa­ter­front Work­ers Trade Union (SWW­TU) Hall on Wright­son Road. From there, they staged a loud and de­ter­mined protest out­side the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port head of­fice on Rich­mond Street, fol­lowed by a demon­stra­tion at the Min­istry of Fi­nance build­ing on In­de­pen­dence Square in Port-of-Spain.

The work­ers’ ac­tions once again forced the As­so­ci­a­tion of Hauliers of Trinidad and To­ba­go (ATTH) to halt op­er­a­tions. Mean­while, the Down­town Own­ers and Mer­chants As­so­ci­a­tion (DO­MA), ex­as­per­at­ed with the sit­u­a­tion, has called for an ur­gent res­o­lu­tion as the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty strug­gles un­der the pres­sure of the on­go­ing dis­rup­tions. Since Oc­to­ber, ten­sions have es­ca­lat­ed, with protests lead­ing to on­go­ing dis­rup­tions at the Port of Port-of-Spain.

Pres­i­dent Gen­er­al of the SWW­TU Michael An­nisette said that the work­ers felt it was more ap­pro­pri­ate to con­vene at the union hall rather than at­tend man­age­ment’s meet­ings.

He urged work­ers to strict­ly ad­here to the port’s rules, sig­nalling a shift in their ap­proach to the dis­pute, as they em­barked on a work-to-rule. “When you’re work­ing on the port, in an area where the speed lim­it is 15 miles per hour, but you’re dri­ving 40 or 50 just to fin­ish the job, and there’s a man­ag­er along with four men push­ing some­one to break the law—well, that’s go­ing to change,” he said.

“From to­day, we’re dri­ving 15 miles per hour on the port. From to­day, we will strict­ly fol­low the rules of the port.”

He fur­ther warned, “That is the in­struc­tion from the pres­i­dent of the Sea­men and Wa­ter­front Work­ers Trade Union. If you fail to car­ry it out, you do so at your own risk. We are cur­rent­ly deal­ing with cas­es where work­ers are in­volved in ac­ci­dents due to poor light­ing fa­cil­i­ties. In such in­stances, they are sent home and giv­en on­ly three to six weeks off.” An­nisette al­so called for the Port Au­thor­i­ty to ho­n­our an agree­ment signed by the pre­vi­ous board, which iden­ti­fied a 12 per cent wage in­crease.

How­ev­er, the Gov­ern­ment, cit­ing le­gal ad­vice from two se­nior coun­sels, has stat­ed that the Mem­o­ran­dum of Agree­ment (MOA) is not en­force­able.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Sinanan as­sured that op­er­a­tions would re­turn to nor­mal soon.

He said, “I would think that the break­ing point will be where the port will ex­plore all its op­tions. I know the port is look­ing at all its op­tions as we speak, and what­ev­er has to hap­pen with­in the le­gal frame­work of the op­er­a­tions will take place.

“The work­ers think they are do­ing what is in their best in­ter­est, but clear­ly a sig­nif­i­cant part of the pop­u­la­tion does not share that view. A cer­tain seg­ment of our coun­try sees their ac­tions as ham­per­ing the na­tion.”

He added, “We know what is hap­pen­ing at the port, and we know what we have to do to en­sure op­er­a­tions con­tin­ue.”

ATTH pres­i­dent Reza Ali, in a re­lease yes­ter­day, stat­ed that as a re­sult, the as­so­ci­a­tion will not de­ploy any equip­ment for port op­er­a­tions for the rest of “Mon­day, No­vem­ber 18, 2024.”

Ali said the ATTH, recog­nis­ing the sig­nif­i­cant im­pact on stake­hold­ers and the pub­lic, was work­ing to min­imise dis­rup­tions. He urged all par­ties to stay in­formed and ex­er­cise pa­tience as the sit­u­a­tion un­folds. The ATTH is close­ly mon­i­tor­ing de­vel­op­ments and will de­cide on fur­ther ac­tion based on what oc­curs to­day.

DO­MA frus­trat­ed with sit­u­a­tion

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia, DO­MA pres­i­dent Gre­go­ry Aboud ex­pressed frus­tra­tion with the sit­u­a­tion.

“Those who have de­cid­ed to put us in a head­lock and choke us are do­ing it un­in­ter­rupt­ed. They are un­moved by the very rea­son­able and con­struc­tive re­marks many of us have made about the hard­ship be­ing cre­at­ed. I feel very bad for Trinidad and To­ba­go, and I feel very bad for those mis­guid­ed per­sons do­ing this. In the words of a greater per­son than any of us, I say, ‘Lord, please for­give them, for they don’t know what they do,’” he said.

“If they were to ad­ver­tise jobs on the port to­mor­row, thou­sands of peo­ple would line up for a chance to do the very same work this group is re­fus­ing to do. Maybe they have their own ar­gu­ment to make about what they are en­ti­tled to ask for now, but those are good jobs that tens of thou­sands of peo­ple would be hap­py to have.”

Aboud said he was hop­ing that good sense pre­vails, “that light will come where there is dark­ness, and sense will come where there is non­sense.’

He added, “We need lead­er­ship to take this head­lock off our coun­try and al­low the econ­o­my to breathe again.”