Op­er­a­tions at the Port of Point Lisas con­tin­ued yes­ter­day, al­though some truck dri­vers re­port­ed mi­nor de­lays in pro­cess­ing doc­u­men­ta­tion fol­low­ing the tem­po­rary clo­sure of se­lect­ed berths at the Port of Port-of-Spain to ac­com­mo­date the vis­it­ing Unit­ed States Navy de­stroy­er, USS Grave­ly.

Truck dri­vers wait­ing to col­lect con­tain­ers at the Point Lisas Port said the flow of goods re­mained steady, though pa­per­work and clear­ance pro­ce­dures were tak­ing slight­ly longer than usu­al.

Speak­ing at the port be­fore noon, dri­ver Ricky Ra­jlal said, “Nor­mal­ly at this time we would have al­ready been in the port and out on our way to the cus­tomer, but we’re still here wait­ing on doc­u­ments to be processed.” He not­ed that while there was “a nor­mal flow of trucks,” the line at the en­trance had grown longer as the morn­ing pro­gressed.

Ra­jlal said the re­al pres­sure would like­ly come “when the ship of­floads and every­thing starts to clear.”

An­oth­er truck dri­ver, who re­quest­ed anonymi­ty, said that with the ex­pect­ed in­crease in con­tain­er ar­rivals over the com­ing week, ad­di­tion­al Cus­toms of­fi­cers and pro­cess­ing staff at the in-gate and out-gate would help im­prove ef­fi­cien­cy and pre­vent back­logs.

“If the con­tain­ers don’t get mixed up and the pa­per­work moves faster, the process will be eas­i­er for every­one,” he said. “It would help if they in­crease Cus­toms so that the doc­u­ments can move quick­ly.”

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia in a pre­vi­ous in­ter­view, Act­ing CEO of the Port Au­thor­i­ty, Robert Ram­sub­hag, said ship­ping agents and op­er­a­tors have been ad­vised to make al­ter­na­tive arrange­ments while cer­tain berths at the Port of Port-of-Spain re­main un­avail­able to ac­com­mo­date the vis­it­ing US naval ves­sel be­tween Oc­to­ber 26-30.

On Sun­day, a joint press re­lease from the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion, the Port Au­thor­i­ty of T&T (PATT), and the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Port De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion Lim­it­ed (Plipde­co) an­nounced the Point Lisas Port would be used to ac­com­mo­date ves­sels and car­go with the ar­rival of the US guid­ed mis­sile de­stroy­er at the Port of Port-of-Spain. —RDS