Raphael John-Lall

Protest ac­tion at the Port of Port-of-Spain has ground­ed goods en­ter­ing and leav­ing the coun­try for a sec­ond con­sec­u­tive day.Tat Ma­haraj, rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the sec­re­tari­at of the Hauliers As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T, said im­porters, ex­porters and busi­ness­es were be­ing af­fect­ed by the ac­tion at the port that be­gan Mon­day.

"Ac­cord­ing to a no­tice sent out by the port's man­age­ment to all the stake­hold­ers, work­ers did not start work this morn­ing. This has af­fect­ed busi­ness­es, ex­porters, im­porters and man­u­fac­tur­ers. I have been get­ting calls all day about peo­ple com­plain­ing their goods can­not be moved," she told the T&T Guardian yes­ter­day.She said ac­cord­ing to the no­tice sent out by the port's man­age­ment to stake­hold­ers, the man­age­ment said it had an emer­gency meet­ing with the Sea­men and Wa­ter­front Work­ers' Trade Union (SWW­TU) to find a so­lu­tion.

Bet­ty Gib­bons, man­ag­er of pub­lic re­la­tions at the port, sent the T&T Guardian a copy of the work stop­page no­tice sent out by the port op­er­a­tions con­sul­tant Nar­ine Singh to all stake­hold­ers.

The no­tice read: "The port wish­es to ad­vise that its em­ploy­ees have not ac­cept­ed work as at Mon­day April 7, 0700 hours. This ac­tion is neg­a­tive­ly af­fect­ing ves­sel, yard, de­liv­ery and shed op­er­a­tions through the Port of Port-of-Spain. Man­age­ment is cur­rent­ly hold­ing dis­cus­sions with the union to ad­dress the mat­ter. Every ef­fort is be­ing made to re­solve it in the short­est pos­si­ble time."

Say­eed Mo­hammed, pres­i­dent of the Hauliers' As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T, said the first truck move­ment they saw was not un­til mid-af­ter­noon on Mon­day and that they were "suf­fer­ing."He added: "Truck­ers who went to the Port-of-Spain port this morn­ing to do le­git­i­mate busi­ness could not go in to do their busi­ness."In the Point Lisas port, trucks are try­ing to en­ter the Con­tain­er Ex­am­i­na­tion Cen­tre (CEC) and the port work­ers are deny­ing them from get­ting in­to there be­cause the CEC is blocked and trucks can­not move.

"Since 8 am the truck­ers have not been able to move to the CEC and peo­ple have not been able to make a dol­lar for the day yet and can­not make a day's work."Michael An­nisette, pres­i­dent-gen­er­al of the SWW­TU, told the T&T Guardian the cur­rent three- year col­lec­tive agree­ment would end next month and there had been no word from the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer (CPO) to be­gin ne­go­ti­a­tions.He said work­ers had now reached a point of "frus­tra­tion."

"Af­ter 29 months work­ers are frus­trat­ed. They are in a state of mind where they are un­pro­duc­tive and can­not fo­cus and do any work," he added.He said if there was any pro­longed work stop­page on the port it would af­fect the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty."This has im­pli­ca­tions for the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty. If peo­ple can­not de­liv­er goods then the coun­try will be af­fect­ed. The port is im­por­tant to the econ­o­my," he said.

An­nisette said al­though he was not present at the meet­ing yes­ter­day, the sec­re­tary gen­er­al of the SWW­TU was present at the meet­ing with man­age­ment."They are meet­ing and I hope that they be­gin to take us se­ri­ous­ly. Work­ers are hu­mans and not inan­i­mate ob­jects," he added.