Some busi­ness own­ers are rais­ing con­cerns over mount­ing costs and pro­longed de­lays, as con­tain­ers con­signed to a non-gazetted Gov­ern­ment min­istry re­main stuck at the Port of Port-of-Spain.

Port sources said con­tain­ers ad­dressed to the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty re­main strand­ed, un­able to clear Cus­toms, fol­low­ing the min­istry’s re­cent re­brand­ing as the Min­istry of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty, a name that had not yet been of­fi­cial­ly gazetted up to yes­ter­day.

The de­lay in pub­lish­ing the new min­istry in the Gazette, the Gov­ern­ment’s le­gal jour­nal, has ren­dered the Min­istry of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty ef­fec­tive­ly in­vis­i­ble in the eyes of Cus­toms sys­tems and le­gal frame­works.

As a re­sult, con­tain­ers ad­dressed to the for­mer Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty can­not be re­as­signed or cleared un­der the new name.

“The sys­tem sim­ply doesn’t recog­nise them,” one cus­toms of­fi­cer not­ed.

“With­out gazetting, it’s like the min­istry doesn’t ex­ist in the eyes of the law,” said port and Cus­toms sources.

A busi­ness own­er, im­port­ing goods on be­half of the min­istry or in­volved in its sup­ply chain, said they are now pay­ing thou­sands in port fees. With dai­ly stor­age charges av­er­ag­ing $300 to $600 per con­tain­er, the own­er, who asked not to be named, said oth­er com­pa­nies are af­fect­ed and have re­port­ed loss­es ex­ceed­ing $25,000 per ship­ment.

Co­or­di­na­tor of the Con­fed­er­a­tion of Re­gion­al Busi­ness Cham­bers Jai Lelad­hars­ingh has is­sued a pub­lic ap­peal for clar­i­ty and ur­gent ac­tion from Gov­ern­ment agen­cies, es­pe­cial­ly in light of the re­cent po­lit­i­cal tran­si­tion.

“I know that the new UNC and Coali­tion of In­ter­ests Gov­ern­ment is cur­rent­ly tran­si­tion­ing and get­ting on with the work of the state,” Lelad­hars­ingh said.

“What I would ad­vise busi­ness­es that have con­tain­ers at the port is to con­tact the Min­istry of De­fence.”

He added that based on his un­der­stand­ing, Im­mi­gra­tion and Cus­toms now fall un­der the purview of De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge.

He al­so ap­pealed to the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion to con­sid­er waiv­ing de­mur­rage and stor­age fees ac­crued since the April 28 Gen­er­al Elec­tion.

“These busi­ness­peo­ple need some re­lief. Now that they un­der­stand where Cus­toms is lo­cat­ed, the process­es and pro­ce­dures can take place seam­less­ly.”

He em­pha­sised that while the po­lit­i­cal tran­si­tion is un­der­stand­able, it should not come at the ex­pense of strug­gling busi­ness own­ers, many of whom are al­ready grap­pling with in­fla­tion, ship­ping de­lays, and eco­nom­ic un­cer­tain­ty.

Al­so con­tact­ed, TT Cham­ber pres­i­dent and CEO Vashti Guyadeen said the Cham­ber had not re­ceived any con­cerns from its mem­bers on the is­sue.