Ke­jan Haynes

Lead Ed­i­tor-News­gath­er­ing

ke­jan.haynes@guardian.co.tt

Work­ers at the Port of Port-of-Spain are deny­ing claims by the port man­age­ment that work has ful­ly re­sumed at the fa­cil­i­ty.

They em­pha­sised this at a small, lunchtime protest in front of the en­trance to the port yes­ter­day. Port work­ers are con­sid­ered es­sen­tial and are not al­lowed to take strike ac­tion.

A spokesper­son for the group of pro­test­ers, who iden­ti­fied her­self as Ja­nine Phillips, said, “Con­trary to the be­liefs of the min­is­ter’s man­age­ment that they put out to the pub­lic, it is not work as usu­al. There are many health and safe­ty is­sues that are still left un­ad­dressed. We have been ask­ing for a meet­ing. They agreed to have a meet­ing. We have no date for such meet­ing.”

She said port em­ploy­ees worked through the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic with noth­ing ex­tra, even though they too were es­sen­tial work­ers.

She com­plained about rats, pi­geon drop­pings, bath­rooms with no doors and bro­ken toi­lets.

The work­ers al­so took is­sue with mem­bers of the De­fence Force be­ing called in to help of­fload con­tain­ers.

“So the army was called in to op­er­ate the car ves­sel that we had, the Asian Trust. They al­so pro­vid­ed them with lunch. We have our men that work that same ves­sel every week. They don’t get no let­ter of com­men­da­tion. They sent a let­ter of com­men­da­tion to the Trinidad and To­ba­go De­fence Force, Phillips said.

She said the em­ploy­ees would con­tin­ue to raise con­cerns un­til their de­mands were met.

The Port gave no new up­dates about the state of the work­flow yes­ter­day.