Ship­ping lines are turn­ing away from T&T as on­go­ing in­dus­tri­al ac­tion by work­ers con­tin­ues at the Port of Port-of-Spain.

Yes­ter­day, work­ers staged an­oth­er protest, down­ing tools and halt­ing port ac­tiv­i­ties once again. The protest start­ed a month ago.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan con­firmed the ac­tion and al­so not­ed that ship­ping com­pa­nies are not com­ing to Trinidad.

“While we don’t have spe­cif­ic fig­ures yet, it’s clear that the on­go­ing sit­u­a­tion at the port is im­pact­ing ship­ping lines. These large ves­sels don’t head di­rect­ly to one des­ti­na­tion—they stop at mul­ti­ple ports along their route, each with care­ful­ly sched­uled ar­rivals. They al­so need to ac­count for chang­ing tides, which adds to the com­plex­i­ty,” he said.

“Un­for­tu­nate­ly, it seems like there’s a ‘Grinch’ at the port, threat­en­ing to dis­rupt Christ­mas prepa­ra­tions for Trinidad. How­ev­er, I un­der­stand that the port man­age­ment is mak­ing every ef­fort to en­sure that es­sen­tial car­go ar­rives and is cleared prompt­ly to min­imise the im­pact.”

Sinanan al­so dis­missed sug­ges­tions that there will be an in­crease in the cost of goods due to the de­lays. He said, “It doesn’t ap­pear that car­go has been left sit­ting on the port yet or that de­lays have reached that ex­tent. The re­al is­sue is with the tim­ing of of­fload­ing when ves­sels ar­rive. If ships can’t un­load prompt­ly, that’s where prob­lems arise, as ship­ping lines are un­like­ly to dock in Trinidad if de­lays mean wait­ing two or three days. In­stead, they may di­vert to oth­er ports to of­fload their car­go. It’s an un­for­tu­nate sit­u­a­tion that un­der­scores the im­pact of the on­go­ing dis­rup­tions.”

He not­ed that if the ac­tion was re­lat­ed to wage is­sues, it would be dis­cussed at the lev­el of the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer.

Port Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go Chair­man Colonel (Ret’d) Lyle Alexan­der stat­ed that while peo­ple came to work, they with­held their labour. He added that the on­ly con­tin­gency plan is to have di­a­logue.

“The in­volve­ment of the de­fence forces was a one-time mea­sure tak­en to ad­dress the sit­u­a­tion at that mo­ment. Be­yond that, there’s no spe­cif­ic con­tin­gency in place, aside from ap­peal­ing to work­ers’ good­will to con­tin­ue op­er­a­tions,” Alexan­der said.

Sea­men and Wa­ter­front Work­ers Trade Union Pres­i­dent Gen­er­al Michael An­nisette de­scribed the work­ers’ ac­tion as a re­sponse to sev­er­al is­sues at the port.

In a state­ment, the union head ex­pressed deep con­cerns re­gard­ing the Port Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s (PATT) fail­ure to ful­fil its oblig­a­tions and com­mit­ments for up­grad­ing cer­tain roles, as pre­vi­ous­ly dis­cussed with the SWW­TU.

The union head added that de­spite on­go­ing di­a­logue aimed at achiev­ing a fair and col­lab­o­ra­tive res­o­lu­tion, they not­ed with dis­may that the PATT has cho­sen to uni­lat­er­al­ly im­ple­ment a “dis­clo­sure form” for em­ploy­ees to sign pri­or to re­ceiv­ing their pro­mo­tion no­tices.

The SWW­TU ex­ec­u­tive is urg­ing the PATT to cease such ac­tions. The union head is al­so call­ing for a meet­ing with busi­ness stake­hold­ers to share the chal­lenges the work­ers are fac­ing.

In re­sponse to the dis­rup­tion, the pres­i­dent of the As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T Hauliers Reza Ali de­scribed the sit­u­a­tion as crit­i­cal for its mem­bers, as they are now mov­ing from one to ze­ro con­tain­ers from the port. He ap­pealed for a swift res­o­lu­tion and a bal­anced com­pro­mise.

“A quick res­o­lu­tion would al­so help con­trol costs. Right now, our abil­i­ty to gen­er­ate in­come is be­ing se­vere­ly im­pact­ed. Ul­ti­mate­ly, any in­crease in costs on the shelf will de­pend on the de­ci­sions of im­porters, but from our side, the on­go­ing sit­u­a­tion is al­ready cost­ing us sig­nif­i­cant­ly.”

Down­town Own­ers and Mer­chants As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Gre­go­ry Aboud stat­ed that the sit­u­a­tion is af­fect­ing his mem­ber­ship and hav­ing a crip­pling ef­fect on busi­ness­es ex­pect­ing Christ­mas car­go.

He said, “The on­ly so­lu­tion is for the work­ers to get back to work. I urge Mr An­nisette to en­cour­age his team to re­turn to work. This is a very se­ri­ous sit­u­a­tion, with ves­sels al­ready by­pass­ing Trinidad due to the un­cer­tain­ty at the port. For these ship­ping com­pa­nies, it’s no ma­jor loss—they’ve al­ready re­ceived pay­ment for the freight on board, so skip­ping Trinidad and mov­ing on to an­oth­er des­ti­na­tion has min­i­mal im­pact on them. How­ev­er, when they by­pass us, it al­so af­fects our ex­port econ­o­my, as these ves­sels won’t be here to take on out­bound goods,” Aboud said.