An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

Cus­tomers af­fect­ed by pro­longed de­lays in­volv­ing Trin­ba­go Ex­press USA are set to re­ceive long-await­ed re­lief, as the Port Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go (PATT) has an­nounced that the de­liv­ery of car­go will now pro­ceed fol­low­ing Gov­ern­ment in­ter­ven­tion.

In a news re­lease is­sued yes­ter­day, PATT said it was aware that cit­i­zens util­is­ing the ser­vices of Trin­ba­go Ex­press USA had been un­able to take de­liv­ery of their car­go for sev­er­al months due to cir­cum­stances out­side of the Port Au­thor­i­ty’s con­trol. The sit­u­a­tion re­sult­ed in hard­ship and in­con­ve­nience for cus­tomers, many of whom had ship­ments held at lo­cal ports with lit­tle clar­i­ty on when they would be re­leased.

The re­lease not­ed the Gov­ern­ment recog­nised the chal­lenges ex­pe­ri­enced by af­fect­ed cus­tomers and took de­ci­sive ac­tion to fa­cil­i­tate the re­ceipt of their car­go un­der Sec­tion 8 of the Port Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go Act. This le­gal pro­vi­sion has now en­abled PATT, work­ing along­side Cus­toms, to pro­ceed with the de­liv­ery of el­i­gi­ble goods.

As a re­sult, PATT and Cus­toms are now in a po­si­tion to move for­ward with the re­lease and de­liv­ery of car­go that sat­is­fies the re­quire­ments of the Act. De­liv­er­ies are sched­uled to be­gin to­mor­row.

The Port Au­thor­i­ty said it has al­ready com­menced an out­reach ex­er­cise and has con­tact­ed sev­er­al cus­tomers whose car­go qual­i­fies for de­liv­ery. How­ev­er, PATT not­ed that in some cas­es, con­tact num­bers on record were unan­swered or no longer in ser­vice. Cus­tomers whose con­tact de­tails may have changed are, there­fore, be­ing en­cour­aged to con­tact the au­thor­i­ty di­rect­ly to en­sure they are in­clud­ed in the de­liv­ery process.

Af­fect­ed cus­tomers may con­tact PATT via email at cus­tomer­sup­port@pat­nt.com or by tele­phone at +1 (868) 683-4253 for fur­ther in­for­ma­tion.

While the news re­lease did not spec­i­fy the vol­ume or val­ue of car­go to be re­leased, the an­nounce­ment brings a mea­sure of clar­i­ty and re­as­sur­ance to cus­tomers who have been await­ing a res­o­lu­tion for months. The Port Au­thor­i­ty al­so did not out­line the spe­cif­ic cir­cum­stances that led to the dis­rup­tion in­volv­ing Trin­ba­go Ex­press USA, but said it re­mains com­mit­ted to work­ing with all rel­e­vant stake­hold­ers to en­sure the law­ful and or­der­ly de­liv­ery of car­go.

The de­vel­op­ment is ex­pect­ed to ease pres­sure on con­sumers and port op­er­a­tions, par­tic­u­lar­ly as de­mand for goods typ­i­cal­ly in­creas­es dur­ing the Christ­mas pe­ri­od.

Guardian Me­dia has been fol­low­ing the Trin­ba­go Ex­press mat­ter for sev­er­al months. Since the end of Au­gust, Trin­ba­go Ex­press CEO Pamela Lind­say pub­licly as­sured af­fect­ed cus­tomers that ef­forts were un­der­way to re­lease the con­tain­ers and re­turn goods to their own­ers.

Sev­er­al cus­tomers con­tact­ed Guardian Me­dia on Wednes­day, ex­press­ing re­lief that the is­sue is fi­nal­ly be­ing re­solved. While some ex­pressed con­cern that por­tions of their ship­ments may have ex­pired due to the pro­longed stor­age pe­ri­od, many in­di­cat­ed that they are grate­ful to have re­cov­ered what re­mains of their goods af­ter months of un­cer­tain­ty.

For af­fect­ed cus­tomers, the com­mence­ment of de­liv­er­ies rep­re­sents a long-await­ed step to­ward clo­sure in a mat­ter that has caused fi­nan­cial strain and frus­tra­tion for hun­dreds of fam­i­lies and small busi­ness­es.