As a long-time port em­ploy­ee, I was some­what sur­prised at the hands-on ap­proach be­ing tak­en by the Min­is­ter of Trans­port, De­vant Ma­haraj, in the cur­rent dis­pute be­tween em­ploy­ees and man­age­ment at the port. On Feb­ru­ary 11, a Sat­ur­day, he was present at the Port of Port-of-Spain, where he met with the pres­i­dent of the SWW­TU, Michael An­nisette, and mem­bers of the port man­age­ment team. I un­der­stand that the meet­ing was pro­duc­tive and the work­ers were lat­er as­sured by our pres­i­dent that all was well.

The min­is­ter then pro­ceed­ed on a tour of port fa­cil­i­ties ac­com­pa­nied by An­nisette. What struck me as be­ing un­usu­al was that in­stead of just sum­mon­ing every­one to his of­fice, the min­is­ter chose to go to the port him­self, demon­strat­ing re­spect for the work­ers and our union. I don't re­mem­ber ever see­ing a min­is­ter at the port for any­thing like this un­der the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion.

I do not know what the fi­nal out­come of the ne­go­ti­a­tions will be, but I am con­fi­dent that we have a Min­is­ter of Trans­port that is will­ing to talk to the or­di­nary work­ers in an ef­fort to ad­dress their con­cerns. I look for­ward to the next vis­it by Min­is­ter Ma­haraj. I sin­cere­ly hope it will be un­der bet­ter cir­cum­stances.

J Ga­jad­har

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