Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­ton@cnc3.co.tt

Op­er­a­tions at the Port of Port-of-Spain were dis­rupt­ed for a sec­ond suc­ces­sive day yes­ter­day, due to in­dus­tri­al ac­tion by work­ers.

The ac­tion be­gan on Wednes­day, when work­ers walked off the job, cit­ing con­cerns about health and safe­ty and out­stand­ing wage ne­go­ti­a­tions.

In a state­ment is­sued yes­ter­day, the Port Au­thor­i­ty con­firmed that no ves­sel op­er­a­tions were con­duct­ed but that min­i­mal de­liv­er­ies were still fa­cil­i­tat­ed through the con­tain­er ter­mi­nal.

De­spite these chal­lenges, the in­ter-is­land seabridge ser­vice op­er­at­ed by the Trinidad and To­ba­go In­ter-Is­land Trans­porta­tion Co re­mained un­af­fect­ed.

The Port Au­thor­i­ty as­sured the pub­lic that all seabridge op­er­a­tions were run­ning smooth­ly, with no dis­rup­tions to pas­sen­ger or freight ser­vices be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia about the is­sue, Sea­men and Wa­ter­front Work­ers’ Trade Union (SWW­TU) pres­i­dent Michael Anisette con­firmed that op­er­a­tions were again af­fect­ed by the work­ers’ ac­tion.

“The work­ers are emo­tion­al, an­gry and up­set. It’s im­por­tant to al­low those feel­ings to play out. If you un­der­stand hu­man psy­chol­o­gy, you will ap­pre­ci­ate the con­cerns, the emo­tion­al­ism and the anger. This is all in light of what I point­ed out yes­ter­day.

“De­spite that, these emo­tions are still present, and my role is to let them un­fold. I’m al­so try­ing to bring log­ic and com­mon sense back in­to the con­ver­sa­tion, as we nav­i­gate through to­day’s chal­lenges,” he said.

He said the port had not reached out to the union of­fi­cial­ly but not­ed he had a con­ver­sa­tion with a se­nior man­ag­er.

“No, they haven’t reached out to me of­fi­cial­ly. How­ev­er, a se­nior man­ag­er en­gaged me in some dis­cus­sions this morn­ing. I point­ed out some quick fix­es that we could im­ple­ment im­me­di­ate­ly to show there is a lev­el of at­ten­tion to the is­sues raised by the work­ers.” he said.

“While I un­der­stand that some is­sues will take time to ad­dress, there are def­i­nite­ly quick so­lu­tions avail­able. I urged him to pri­ori­tise these mat­ters. He promised to speak with the act­ing CEO and get back to me.”

In its state­ment, the Port Au­thor­i­ty said it was work­ing as­sid­u­ous­ly to min­imise the im­pact of the dis­rup­tions but pro­vid­ed no fur­ther de­tails on the rea­sons be­hind the work­ers’ protest or how long the dis­rup­tions are ex­pect­ed to last.