Carisa Lee

Re­porter

carisa.lee@cnc3.co.tt

Pres­i­dent Gen­er­al of the Sea­men and Wa­ter­front Work­ers Trade Union (SWW­TU) Michael An­nisette says af­ter a meet­ing with man­age­ment on March 4, they have been see­ing some im­prove­ments to the health and safe­ty is­sues they raised re­gard­ing op­er­a­tions at the Port of Port-of-Spain.

The trade union leader said man­age­ment was un­aware of some of their com­plaints, so the SWW­TU sent a three-page doc­u­ment high­light­ing con­cerns and the work to solve the is­sues has be­gun.

On March 2, the Port of Port-of-Spain (PPOS) is­sued a re­lease ad­vis­ing cus­tomers of an in­ter­rup­tion in op­er­a­tions due to the un­avail­abil­i­ty of the full com­ple­ment of staff.

This was the sec­ond time the over 1,000 work­ers at the port had tak­en in­dus­tri­al ac­tion. In late Feb­ru­ary, 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.

Ac­cord­ing to An­nisette, some of the is­sues raised by port work­ers were bad light­ing, no work­ing alarm on the Scar­bor­ough Port, im­prop­er chang­ing rooms and equip­ment which was not suit­ed for the op­er­a­tions.

An­nisette said he’s head­ing to To­ba­go to­day to meet with mem­bers and man­age­ment about their is­sues.

Chair­man of the Port, Lyle Alexan­der, con­firmed that op­er­a­tions have not been af­fect­ed since the meet­ing.

“They have been com­ing out to work and they have met with man­age­ment and dis­cus­sions have tak­en place which is go­ing on, it’s as nor­mal as it could be at this stage,” Alexan­der said.

But in case there is a re­cur­rence, Alexan­der said an un­of­fi­cial con­tin­gency plan has been de­vised so cus­tomers are less af­fect­ed.

“There will al­ways be a re­sponse to what­ev­er cir­cum­stance comes up on the hori­zon...man­age­ment had a slate of ac­tions that they can pull from in the event if cer­tain things hap­pen,” he ex­plained.

An­nisette added yes­ter­day that while the health and safe­ty is­sues were be­ing ad­dressed there are oth­er mat­ters that man­age­ment will have to look in­to.

He iden­ti­fied these as the pe­ri­od for con­fir­ma­tion of work­ers’ pen­sion plans, as well as man­age­ment en­gag­ing with the union when de­ci­sions are made, as some mat­ters need to be giv­en at­ten­tion.

Last week, the Down­town Own­ers and Mer­chants As­so­ci­a­tion (DO­MA) said it was con­cerned about the im­pact re­peat­ed in­ter­rup­tions at the Port of Port-of-Spain would have on the econ­o­my and the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor.

In a state­ment is­sued to the me­dia, DO­MA said ves­sels from ma­jor ship­ping lines re­mained off­shore, un­able to berth or dis­charge their car­go. DO­MA warned that if the de­lays con­tin­ue, ship­ping lines may by­pass the PPOS and go on to oth­ers to main­tain their sched­ules.