Seamen and Waterfront Workers’ Union (SWWTU) president general Michael Annisette says they have scheduled a meeting on Monday with the management of the Port of Port-of-Spain (PPOS) to discuss health and safety issues. This after workers staged yet another protest action by not turning up for duty yesterday, disrupting some services at the port.
According to Annisette, the meeting was initially scheduled for yesterday but was called off.
“There was to be a meeting with the Health and Safety committee, which hasn’t met over an extended period of time in a place like the Port, which is a health hazard and they called and cancelled it today (Friday),” Annisette said.
Yesterday morning, the Port of Port-of-Spain issued a release advising customers of an interruption in operations due to the unavailability of the full complement of staff.
“Most of the people who did not turn out were the equipment operators, so we had some negative impact on our operations today (Friday),” Port Authority of Trinidad and Tobago (PATT) chairman Lyle Alexander said.
Alexander told Guardian Media that they were looking at a contingency plan to ensure customers are not affected if this recurs.
However, he said he was not sure if the health and safety issues highlighted by the union were ever presented to management.
But Annisette said workers from both the Port-of-Spain and Scarborough ports sent numerous letters complaining about health and safety issues but their working conditions remained the same.
“They working in the interest of ensuring that the port is operationalised and delivers the service to the general public but they cannot continue indefinitely, which I agree with, to work,” he said.
Some of the issues were bad lighting on both ports, no working alarm on the Scarborough Port, improper changing rooms and equipment which was not suited for the operations.
“We try our best but workers are human beings...it is a hazard waiting to happen, it could compromise the safety of workers, we driving equipment that has gone past the life cycle, workers on the port driving equipment with no seat,” he said.
Annisette said both ports have approximately 1,800 unionised workers and apart from poor working conditions, he also complained about the unprofessional behaviour of a manager.
“We in a union environment...we going to have a problem on the port because workers are reaching to a stage where they are not willing to work with that particular manager,” he explained.
He said management knows who the person is and needs to rein him in.
This was the second time the over 1,000 workers at the port had taken industrial action. Last week, absenteeism also caused disruptions at the port. On that occasion, however, apart from health and safety issues, the SWWTU also raised a salary increase dispute among their complaints.