Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­ton@cnc3.co.tt

For­mer work­ers of the Cabo Star are call­ing for eq­ui­ty af­ter its re­place­ment, the MV Blue Wave Har­mo­ny, was manned by for­eign sea­far­ers.

More than 20 sea­far­ers, rep­re­sent­ed by the Sea­men and Wa­ter­front Work­ers Trade Union (SWW­TU), staged a protest out­side the T&T Fer­ry Ter­mi­nal in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day, ac­cus­ing the Gov­ern­ment of sidelin­ing qual­i­fied lo­cal work­ers.

Speak­ing at the protest, SWW­TU ex­ec­u­tive coun­cil mem­ber and sea­far­ers’ rep­re­sen­ta­tive An­tho­ny Alex­is said the union was nei­ther in­formed nor con­sult­ed ahead of the tran­si­tion, de­spite what he de­scribed as a long-stand­ing prac­tice of en­gag­ing the union when­ev­er ves­sels are in­tro­duced to op­er­ate the in­ter-is­land seabridge.

The MV Blue Wave Har­mo­ny was char­tered by the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go to re­place the Cabo Star af­ter its lease ex­pired on Jan­u­ary 12. The roll-on/roll-off (Ro-Ro) pas­sen­ger and car­go ves­sel is ex­pect­ed to sup­port both car­go and pas­sen­ger op­er­a­tions on the seabridge, of­fer­ing in­creased ca­pac­i­ty and up­grad­ed fea­tures.

The ves­sel ar­rived in Trinidad and To­ba­go on Jan­u­ary 22 ahead of its planned en­try in­to ser­vice. How­ev­er, dur­ing sea tri­als at the Port of Scar­bor­ough on Jan­u­ary 30, the Blue Wave Har­mo­ny sus­tained dam­age while berthing, rais­ing op­er­a­tional con­cerns. Re­ports lat­er in­di­cat­ed that the ves­sel de­part­ed for Port-of-Spain to un­der­go re­pairs as part of its com­mis­sion­ing process.

“The work­ers are here to­day be­cause they are be­ing treat­ed un­kind­ly. In­jus­tice has been tak­ing place,” Alex­is said. “Be­fore, we had a lot of work­ers work­ing on the Cabo Star. Now this ves­sel has come to re­place it, and they bring for­eign­ers to car­ry out the du­ties where our lo­cals are sup­posed to be do­ing.”

Alex­is stressed that the dis­placed sea­far­ers are prop­er­ly trained and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly cer­ti­fied, not­ing that many have worked on a wide range of ves­sels both lo­cal­ly and abroad. He said the union on­ly be­came aware of the staffing changes af­ter the for­eign crew had al­ready be­gun per­form­ing du­ties tra­di­tion­al­ly han­dled by lo­cal work­ers.

“Our lo­cals are prop­er­ly qual­i­fied. They have worked in­ter­na­tion­al­ly, they work on all dif­fer­ent ves­sels, and we were not in­formed,” he said. “We find that we have been to­tal­ly dis­re­spect­ed.”

Ac­cord­ing to Alex­is, the Cabo Star had been op­er­at­ing on the seabridge since 2017 and of­fi­cial­ly left ser­vice on Jan­u­ary 3. He said ap­prox­i­mate­ly 20 sea­far­ers who were em­ployed on the ves­sel have since been left with­out work.

“These work­ers op­er­at­ed on ro­ta­tion­al shifts—two months on, two months off, or one month on, one month off,” he said. “So it’s not on­ly the work­ers who are af­fect­ed; their fam­i­lies are al­so af­fect­ed. When you’re not work­ing to feed your fam­i­ly, plen­ty prob­lems arise.”

Alex­is said the union wrote to and held dis­cus­sions with the min­istry re­spon­si­ble for mar­itime op­er­a­tions, seek­ing clar­i­ty on em­ploy­ment arrange­ments for lo­cal sea­far­ers. While the min­istry in­di­cat­ed the mat­ter would be ad­dressed, he said for­eign work­ers con­tin­ue to oc­cu­py po­si­tions pre­vi­ous­ly held by lo­cals.

“Be­fore, maybe two days would be used for a han­dover, and from the time the ves­sel reached, our peo­ple would be on board. That is not hap­pen­ing now,” he said.

He added that all pre­vi­ous ves­sels op­er­at­ing the seabridge em­ployed lo­cal sea­far­ers through the union and warned that the SWW­TU would es­ca­late its ac­tions if the mat­ter re­mains un­re­solved.

“We want a re­sponse first from the min­istry—what they in­tend to do and what is their plan,” Alex­is said. “We are not go­ing to sit by idly and al­low for­eign­ers to come and take our jobs.”

Alex­is al­so not­ed that SWW­TU sea­far­ers are recog­nised by the In­ter­na­tion­al Trans­port Work­ers’ Fed­er­a­tion (ITF), un­der­scor­ing that lo­cal work­ers meet in­ter­na­tion­al mar­itime stan­dards.

“Our peo­ple spend a lot of mon­ey on cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and train­ing. You can­not be an of­fi­cer with­out be­ing cer­ti­fied, and our peo­ple are prop­er­ly cer­ti­fied,” he said.

Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed the Port Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go (PATT) cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions man­ag­er Char­lene Ramd­hanie said no PATT em­ploy­ees have been ter­mi­nat­ed or sep­a­rat­ed as a re­sult of the op­er­a­tional­i­sa­tion of the Blue Wave Har­mo­ny.

Min­is­ter of Works and In­fra­struc­ture Jear­lean John was al­so con­tact­ed but she re­ferred Guardian Me­dia to the Port Au­thor­i­ty for com­ment.