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Sunday, July 27, 2025

TTMA calls for urgent action on port issues

by

20140418

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Man­u­fac­tur­ers' As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA) said yes­ter­day that it was con­cerned with the re­cent dis­rup­tion of the ser­vices at the port of Port-of-Spain and is of­fer­ing to use its good of­fices to me­di­ate talks aimed at re­solv­ing the is­sues.Dis­con­tent by port work­ers over ne­go­ti­a­tions that are on­go­ing with the man­age­ment has caused sev­er­al work stop­pages at the port re­cent­ly.In a state­ment, the TTMA said: "This re­peat­ed and ap­par­ent pre­dictable ac­tion can re­sult in mount­ing port rent, de­mur­rage charges and raw ma­te­r­i­al short­ages re­sult­ing in the in­abil­i­ty to meet cus­tomer's de­mands in a time­ly fash­ion," ac­cord­ing to the man­u­fac­tur­ers' body, adding that the dis­rup­tions can al­so in­crease the cost of do­ing busi­ness in T&T, re­sult­ing in con­sumers hav­ing to pay more for goods and ser­vices.

The as­so­ci­a­tion not­ed ef­forts else­where in the coun­try to re­duce the cost of do­ing busi­ness. These ef­forts could come to "naught if trade fa­cil­i­ta­tion mea­sures and bor­der agen­cies are not op­er­at­ing in an op­ti­mal fash­ion."The TTMA said: "Man­u­fac­tur­ers are asked to com­pete in a glob­al en­vi­ron­ment where it is crit­i­cal to main­tain and re­duce cost as much as pos­si­ble just to be able to se­cure mar­ket share glob­al­ly, re­gion­al­ly and na­tion­al­ly."Thus, this type of in­dus­tri­al ac­tion is not con­ducive for pro­duc­ers and con­sumers alike and can on­ly serve to erode the lim­it­ed com­pet­i­tive ad­van­tages for busi­ness in the coun­try as well as add to in­crease in­fla­tion­ary pres­sure on the con­sumers."

The TTMA said that it was aware that the is­sues sur­round­ing these in­dus­tri­al un­rests are not eas­i­ly re­solved and are chal­leng­ing to all par­ties con­cerned. How­ev­er, it called on all par­ties in­volved–the gov­ern­ment, the labour union and the port man­age­ment–to work to­geth­er in a mean­ing­ful way to bring some res­o­lu­tion the sit­u­a­tion. Ac­cord­ing to the TTMA: "It is im­per­a­tive that ac­tion be tak­en im­me­di­ate­ly to chart a way for­ward that speaks to trans­paren­cy, ac­count­abil­i­ty, fair­ness and eq­ui­tabil­i­ty where all par­ties' con­cerns are con­sid­ered. There should be a prop­er frame­work in place that will al­low for ad­dress­ing the con­cerns of the past, present and fu­ture to the in­ter­ests of all." The as­so­ci­a­tion said port op­er­a­tions in this coun­try are of para­mount im­por­tance to the trad­ing en­vi­ron­ment "and to op­er­ate in a cli­mate that is not pre­dictable acts as a dis­in­cen­tive to the busi­ness fra­ter­ni­ty in T&T."As a re­sult, the TTMA plead­ed with the rel­e­vant par­ties in­volved in the dis­pute to work to­geth­er in a time­ly fash­ion to bring back some lev­el of nor­mal­cy to the op­er­a­tions on the port of Port-of-Spain.


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