PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

Two days af­ter be­ing giv­en the all-clear to re­sume work, the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor was al­most at full op­er­a­tion ca­pac­i­ty yes­ter­day.

Pres­i­dent of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA) Tri­cia Coos­al said the vast ma­jor­i­ty of the in­dus­try re­opened.

“We have over 90 per cent of our man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor out to work as of to­day (yes­ter­day). We have less than five per cent that are not open and a few rea­sons would be that they are sourc­ing raw ma­te­ri­als and stock­ing up on in­ven­to­ry,” said Coos­al.

She ex­plained that there were a few is­sues re­gard­ing the re­sump­tion of op­er­a­tions but most of these would have been ex­pect­ed giv­en the lull in ac­tiv­i­ty at the fac­to­ries over the past two months.

“There will al­so be is­sues where they would need to be restart­ing of their fac­to­ries, clean­ing the plant, start­ing up the plants af­ter be­ing out of pro­duc­tion for such a long pe­ri­od of time,” she said.

“We are get­ting the gears grind­ing again.”

Oth­er is­sues which faced the in­dus­try, she said, were the as­sess­ment of cur­rent stock, as in some cas­es, cer­tain prod­ucts may have to be dis­card­ed out­right.

“In­ven­to­ry items on some of the ma­te­ri­als would be per­ish­able items. So these items would take a day or two to stock­pile, to source, to stock with­in the fac­to­ries, as they would not have been able to store this for quite some time,” Coos­al ex­plained.

Brian Williams builds school chairs for export at the MDCUM factory, Consol Drive, Trincity Industrial Estate, Macoya, yesterday, during the first day of the reopening of the manufacturing sector.

ANISTO ALVES

De­spite this, she was con­fi­dent that the in­dus­try would be back to nor­mal by mid-week.

At MD­CUM, work­ers got back to the grind af­ter more than two months with­out work.

Gen­er­al man­ag­er An­tho­ny Farah said it took some work over the week­end to get the fac­to­ry back up to op­er­a­tional lev­el yes­ter­day.

How­ev­er, he ex­plained that there was still a ma­chine that was down, as it had been sub­ject to re­pair via re­mote guid­ance by a for­eign tech­ni­cian when the in­dus­try was asked to halt.

Farah said he hopes that they will re­sume the restora­tion of the ma­chine this week.

He told the Guardian Me­dia that the pause on work came just as the fur­ni­ture man­u­fac­tur­er had got a large ex­port or­der.

The tim­ing was less than ide­al, as he is al­so con­cerned that with the new school term, which is al­so ex­pect­ed to re­sume in Sep­tem­ber, the de­mand for the com­pa­ny’s fur­ni­ture will not be short.

Farah be­lieves the in­dus­try is one of the best equipped to run dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, as many oth­er com­pa­nies with­in the in­dus­try now use au­to­mat­ed ma­chines to re­duce sup­ply line con­tact pre­vi­ous­ly seen in fac­to­ries.

Workers of Kamri Glass in Marabella build UPVC vents on the first day of work as the Manufacturing sector reopened , yesterday.

RISHI RAGOONATH

He al­so point­ed out that their fac­to­ry was high­ly ven­ti­lat­ed.

How­ev­er, TTMA pres­i­dent Coos­al is aware that vac­ci­na­tion is very much a ma­jor part of the way for­ward. She es­ti­mat­ed that half of the man­u­fac­tur­ing in­dus­try is vac­ci­nat­ed and they are hop­ing to raise that num­ber.

“I would say that over 50 per cent of the em­ploy­ees with­in the man­u­fac­tur­ing in­dus­try that want to be vac­ci­nat­ed have been vac­ci­nat­ed. So we are quite pleased with our num­ber and as the roll­out con­tin­ues and more vac­ci­na­tions are al­lo­cat­ed to the man­u­fac­tur­ing in­dus­try, we ex­pect that num­ber to rise very rapid­ly and that’s good news for us...vac­ci­nate to op­er­ate,” she said.

Khadine Khan operates the bender at MDCUM, factory, Consol Drive, Trincity Industrial Estate Macoya, yesterday, on the first day of the reopening of the manufacturing sector.

ANISTO ALVES