Dix­ie-Ann Dick­son

Col­in Lu­cas is tipped to be the next chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer (CEO) of the Port of Port-of-Spain, re­li­able sources in­formed the Guardian. How­ev­er, the source stat­ed that all par­ties in­volved were still en­gage in dis­cus­sions. When con­tact­ed, Christo­pher Mendez, CEO of Port Au­thor­i­ty did not con­firm the ap­point­ment. "I have no com­ment. When an ap­point­ment is of­fi­cial­ly made, the me­dia will be in­formed at the ap­pro­pri­ate time," Mendez said. Lu­cas al­so told the Guardian that he, too, did not wish to com­ment on the is­sue.

Calls to Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er's cell phone went unan­swered. Warn­er is al­so the line min­is­ter for the Port. Weiger Koorn­stra, the for­mer CEO, left the po­si­tion af­ter his con­tract end­ed Feb­ru­ary month-end. The for­mer CEO and Por­tia Man­age­ment Ser­vices Ltd were hired in 2006 to use their man­age­ment skills to im­prove the ef­fi­cien­cy and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty of the Port. Their ini­tial con­tract pe­ri­od of three years end­ed in March 2009 but was re­newed for an ad­di­tion­al two years. Por­tia, which is an in­ter­na­tion­al firm is well known in the UK for its man­age­ment and op­er­a­tional ca­pa­bil­i­ties.

The com­pa­ny was es­tab­lished in 1978 and is the in­ter­na­tion­al arm of Peel Ports Lim­it­ed, the UK's sec­ond largest port group han­dling 65 mil­lion tones of car­go an­nu­al­ly. Por­tia pro­vides man­age­ment and op­er­a­tion, train­ing, ad­vi­so­ry and oth­er re­lat­ed ser­vices through­out the world. But de­spite ef­forts by the last man­age­ment com­pa­ny and CEO, busi­ness­men are still ex­press­ing con­cerns over cer­tain is­sues.

Busi­ness­men were dis­sat­is­fied that the Port was still op­er­at­ing un­der in­ef­fi­cient and ar­cha­ic sys­tems.

In an ear­li­er re­port, Greig Laugh­lin, T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ers' As­so­ci­a­tion's pres­i­dent com­ment­ed that the Port of Port-of-Spain was stuck in the 1960's and need­ed an ef­fi­cient on-line sys­tem, in or­der for it to be more or­gan­ised and pro­fes­sion­al.

Koorn­stra dur­ing his time had ex­pressed like views.

Koorn­stra had not­ed ear­li­er that if they were giv­en the right tools, the Port would be­come ef­fi­cient and ef­fec­tive.

About Lu­cas

Lu­cas, who was pop­u­lar­ly known in the so­ca in­dus­try, was the mu­si­cal di­rec­tor of the band Sound Rev­o­lu­tion for over 14 years. Al­so a com­pos­er, many would re­mem­ber him for his big hit in 1991, "Dol­lar Wine". But he was al­so the first lo­cal man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of the TTPost in 2006. Fol­low­ing this he be­came the ceo of the Copy­right Mu­sic Or­gan­i­sa­tion of T&T (COTT) from Oc­to­ber 1st, 2009.