Op­er­a­tions at the port in Port-of-Spain are mov­ing at a snail’s pace, ac­cord­ing to some port work­ers. It comes af­ter more than a month of in­dus­tri­al ac­tion led by the Sea­men and Wa­ter­front Work­ers Trade Union (SWW­TU), which end­ed last week af­ter an In­dus­tri­al Court in­junc­tion or­dered port work­ers back to work.

Yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, SWW­TU pres­i­dent gen­er­al Michael An­nisette said the union would meet with the Port Au­thor­i­ty ex­ec­u­tive to­day at 1.30 pm.

Work­ers had or­gan­ised a can­dle­light vig­il that turned in­to a protest out­side the port on Dock Road on Tues­day and clam­oured for high­er wages and bet­ter work­ing con­di­tions.

Un­sat­is­fied that their ef­forts con­tin­ue to be ig­nored, some port work­ers yes­ter­day told Guardian Me­dia that while they have re­port­ed back to work, they are now on a “go-slow.”  

One work­er who asked to re­main anony­mous said, “Well, we have our sick days and oth­er en­ti­tle­ments, but oth­er than that, we’re com­ing to work, yes, but things are on a go-slow. Noth­ing much is hap­pen­ing. Things mov­ing less than 50 miles per hour.”  

The port work­er al­so con­firmed that there was a back­log of con­tain­ers at the port ahead of the ar­rival of more ships be­fore Christ­mas. 

Ear­li­er this month, Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan said ship­ping com­pa­nies stopped com­ing to Trinidad as a re­sult of the protest ac­tions. 

At­tempts to con­tact Port Au­thor­i­ty Chair­man Colonel (re­tired) Lyle Alexan­der yes­ter­day were un­suc­cess­ful.