Pres­i­dent of the Sea­men and Wa­ter­front Trade Union (SWW­TU) Michael An­nisette has as­sured that the union stands ready to work with Gov­ern­ment and whichev­er pri­vate com­pa­ny gains con­trol of the Port of Port-of-Spain.

But in an in­ter­view with CNC3’s the Morn­ing Brew, An­nisette said the Gov­ern­ment has no one to blame but it­self for the is­sues at the port.

He re­peat­ed his claims that the port has been starved of cash and re­sources by the State, say­ing work­ers have done their best to work with what was pro­vid­ed.

In his bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion on Oc­to­ber 5, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert an­nounced that by the end of 2021, the port should be in the hands of the pri­vate sec­tor. Lat­er that day, An­nisette said 1,300 work­ers could stand to lose their jobs in the pri­vati­sa­tion.

Yes­ter­day, speak­ing to the Morn­ing Brew host Na­talee Legore, An­nisette said, “The is­sue is if you don’t up­date your in­fra­struc­ture, your equip­ment, if you are not adapt­able to the grow­ing needs of your cus­tomers, which is the ship­ping line, then we will find our­selves in the po­si­tion that we have found our­selves in Trinidad and To­ba­go un­for­tu­nate­ly.”

He said claims that port em­ploy­ees con­tributed to the fa­cil­i­ty’s down­fall are sim­ply un­true.

He de­scribed those claims as an ef­fort to de­flect from the re­al is­sues and place blame on the union and work­ers.

“The ques­tion of in­fra­struc­ture de­vel­op­ment has noth­ing to do with the union and the work­ers, the ques­tions of prop­er equip­ment has noth­ing to with the union and the work­ers, the ques­tion of tech­no­log­i­cal changes on the port has noth­ing to do with the union or by ex­ten­sion the em­ploy­ees.”

He said the port em­ploy­ees need­ed to be ap­plaud­ed for in­creas­ing the vol­ume of con­tain­ers that the port can ac­com­mo­date as he said the work­ing con­di­tions did not al­low for that type of growth.