Dix­ie-Ann Dick­son

Ra­hen­dra Seemu­n­gal, pres­i­dent of T&T Hauliers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTHA), says while the state of emer­gency is im­pact­ing neg­a­tive­ly on oth­ers, his busi­ness is func­tion­ing ef­fec­tive­ly. Seemu­n­gal ex­plained that the cur­few hours are en­cour­ag­ing his cus­tomers to op­er­ate on a time­ly ba­sis re­gard­ing the col­lec­tion of car­go. How­ev­er, he said the Port of Port-of-Spain, which was ini­tial­ly strug­gling, was slow­ly ad­just­ing.

On Tues­day, the Port Au­thor­i­ty and Plipde­co stat­ing that they have ex­tend­ed gate op­er­a­tions on Sat­ur­days to fa­cil­i­tate free de­liv­ery and re­ceipt of con­tain­ers/gen­er­al car­go. "This ex­tend­ed ser­vice took ef­fect from Au­gust 27, and will run each Sat­ur­day un­til the cur­rent cur­few re­stric­tions are lift­ed," the news­pa­per no­tice read.

Re­spond­ing to this de­vel­op­ment, Seemu­n­gal said the free Sat­ur­day ser­vice has helped a great deal.

He said they would usu­al­ly pay for this ser­vice, but since it is free, they are able to move more con­tain­ers. Asked if they have been los­ing rev­enue, he said, not re­al­ly. His em­ploy­ees have al­so in­creased their pro­duc­tiv­i­ty lev­els and are able to de­liv­er on time. Re­gard­ing the cur­few, he said the on­ly set­back is that the fol­low­ing day, there are more con­tain­ers to load, but it was not re­al­ly af­fect­ing his busi­ness. Seemu­n­gal stat­ed that the TTHA is in sup­port of the SoE. If, at the end, the Gov­ern­ment yields pos­i­tive re­sults, then it would be worth it.

"If the cur­few and the state of emer­gency are ex­tend­ed, how­ev­er, I am wor­ried about the back­log it could cause at Cus­toms and Ex­cise." An­oth­er con­cern is that he hopes the Gov­ern­ment main­tains con­trol over the large num­ber of peo­ple the pro­tec­tive ser­vices have ar­rest­ed. He said none of his mem­bers com­plained about any neg­a­tive im­pact from the SoE.