JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Even as the USS Grave­ly de­part­ed T&T’s shores yes­ter­day, Sea­men and Wa­ter­front Work­ers’ Trade Union (SWW­TU) pres­i­dent gen­er­al Michael An­nisette was un­hap­py with the lack of com­mu­ni­ca­tion with his union on its vis­it here.

An­nisette said the berthing of the USS Grave­ly at the Port of Port-of-Spain came with­out con­sul­ta­tion with the union, which he said was not in keep­ing with prop­er in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions prac­tices.

An­nisette be­lieves that the Port Au­thor­i­ty should have dis­cussed the change in work­ing sched­ule for work­ers im­pact­ed by the ship’s pres­ence.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia at the SWW­TU Hall, Wright­son Road, Port-of-Spain, An­nisette said he un­der­stood that the ship’s pres­ence was a mat­ter of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty, which he had no qualms about, save for the im­pact on his mem­bers.

How­ev­er, he said the re­sponse from the Port Au­thor­i­ty about the dis­rup­tions in Port-of-Spain on Wednes­day, a day be­fore the ves­sel left, was not a se­ri­ous at­tempt at com­mu­ni­ca­tion.

“That was a na­tion­al de­ci­sion that was tak­en by the Gov­ern­ment, which we have no con­trol over. They will have all the facts to jus­ti­fy why they would have stopped all con­tain­er op­er­a­tions in Port-of-Spain and rerout­ed to Point Lisas in or­der to ac­com­mo­date a naval ves­sel,” he said.

“There are all kinds of ques­tions that can flow from such de­ci­sions, which I don’t want to get in­to. But the fact is, and which was of deep con­cern to the SWW­TU, there was no com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the union, con­trary to the In­dus­tri­al Re­la­tion Act.”

While in T&T, the USS Grave­ly al­lowed 35 stu­dents and 15 teach­ers from Ce­dros-based Lochmaben RC School to tour the ves­sel on Tues­day.

How­ev­er, both US and lo­cal au­thor­i­ties failed to pro­vide much in­for­ma­tion about what the ves­sel’s crew did while here, even as ten­sions be­tween Venezuela and T&T in­creased af­ter the Nico­las Maduro regime ac­cused T&T of fa­cil­i­tat­ing a pos­si­ble US in­ter­ven­tion in his coun­try.

Mean­while, the Down­town Own­ers and Mer­chants As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Gre­go­ry Aboud was more con­cerned about the im­pact the US pres­ence in the re­gion was hav­ing on the nar­co trade, say­ing it should be viewed as a bless­ing.

“I would like to say that we have to have a high­er un­der­stand­ing of what is tak­ing place. We are get­ting the op­por­tu­ni­ty, maybe to de­stroy the nar­co-trade that has been cut­ting us to pieces and it’s per­haps in the in­ter­est of that high­er goal that we should not be so sen­si­tive about whether any­body was con­sult­ing with us or not,” Aboud said.

Aboud said the Unit­ed States’ pres­ence could be the turn­ing point for the coun­try.

“Al­though I’m not in favour with break­ing ranks with Cari­com, I do be­lieve that it is nec­es­sary for Trinidad and To­ba­go to dis­tin­guish it­self at this time, by stand­ing up to this ter­ri­ble, ter­ri­ble scourge that has been de­stroy­ing our coun­try for too long.”