Da­reece Po­lo

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

The own­er of Trin­ba­go Ship­ping Ex­press, Pamela Lind­say, says out­stand­ing de­mur­rage fees and un­re­solved cus­tomer pay­ments are be­hind the pro­longed de­lays in ship­ments to Trinidad. Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia on Mon­day, Lind­say said she owed more than US$200,000 to a steamship line af­ter con­tain­ers re­mained at the Port of Port-of-Spain be­yond the free stor­age pe­ri­od.

Lind­say ex­plained that her com­pa­ny ini­tial­ly al­lowed cus­tomers in the Unit­ed States to pay for ship­ments in T&T dol­lars, but the arrange­ment ran in­to dif­fi­cul­ties due to a short­age in the US. “We start­ed to of­fer this ser­vice be­cause peo­ple shop here, buy all kinds of things, and then they don’t have the mon­ey to ship it,” she said.

“It was go­ing fine un­til the US short­age. But then peo­ple start­ed be­ing neg­li­gent, tak­ing ad­van­tage. We have had ship­ments aban­doned on the port in Trinidad, with thou­sands of dol­lars still be­ing owed to us.”

She added that the de­mur­rage fees re­mained the main ob­sta­cle, and her at­tempts to ne­go­ti­ate a pay­ment plan with the steamship line have not suc­ceed­ed.

“We need a pay­ment plan. And they’re not co­op­er­at­ing. That’s where the prob­lem is com­ing from,” Lind­say said.

Lind­say al­so ac­knowl­edged the dif­fi­cul­ty faced by cus­tomers, say­ing, “It’s def­i­nite­ly not right. It has noth­ing to do with the cus­tomers. They shouldn’t be caught up in the mid­dle.” She said the com­pa­ny con­tin­ued to op­er­ate while re­solv­ing the is­sues but ad­mit­ted that the pa­per­work and ad­min­is­tra­tive process­es were com­plex and time-con­sum­ing. 

Some ship­ments have al­ready been re­turned, and the port in­di­cat­ed it was will­ing to work with Trin­ba­go Ship­ping Ex­press, which is not yet plan­ning to auc­tion off cus­tomers’ goods.

The de­lays have frus­trat­ed many cus­tomers, some wait­ing since No­vem­ber 2024, in­clud­ing over 60 clients who have vis­it­ed the com­pa­ny’s Port-of-Spain of­fice re­peat­ed­ly.