DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

Ap­prox­i­mate­ly 25 con­tract work­ers as­signed to the Port of Port-of-Spain, who downed tools last week, have re­turned to work. The mat­ter was tem­porar­i­ly re­solved af­ter dis­cus­sions with Sea­men and Wa­ter­front Work­ers’ Trade Union (SWW­TU) pres­i­dent gen­er­al Michael An­nisette, who al­so serves as chair­man of Port and Mar­itime Ser­vices Lim­it­ed (PM­SL), the com­pa­ny to which the work­ers are con­tract­ed.

An­nisette con­firmed that 22 to 26 PM­SL em­ploy­ees were sus­pend­ed pend­ing an in­ves­ti­ga­tion for not re­port­ing for du­ty last Fri­day. How­ev­er, he stressed no one had been ter­mi­nat­ed and full op­er­a­tions re­sumed by Tues­day.

He at­trib­uted the un­rest to deep-seat­ed frus­tra­tions over stag­nant wages and poor work­ing con­di­tions, which the work­ers de­scribed as “in­hu­mane.”

An­nisette point­ed to long-frozen con­tain­er han­dling fees as a ma­jor con­straint.

“It’s an eco­nom­ic is­sue, as I tried to ex­plain. It is not that the com­pa­ny wicked and the com­pa­ny bad,” he said.

“But the crit­i­cal thing is that the vol­ume of con­tain­ers, too, has al­so dropped and then too, with the in­tro­duc­tion of the scan­ner, it has fur­ther dropped and the ques­tion of a con­tract to sup­ply X amount of labour, which we must do.

“Most of the time we are not get­ting the vol­ume of con­tain­ers to see about the con­trac­tu­al oblig­a­tion, which is sev­en days and two per­sons per con­tain­er and there’s 15 days.”

He said the com­pa­ny has not re­ceived an in­crease in han­dling fees since 1995 and pledged to seek di­a­logue with the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance, ac­knowl­edg­ing the de­mands of the bud­get sea­son.

Dur­ing last week’s work stop­page, the com­pa­ny hired tem­po­rary labour to ful­fil its con­trac­tu­al oblig­a­tions with Cus­toms and Ex­cise, which An­nisette de­fend­ed. He ex­plained the ac­tion was nec­es­sary to avoid dis­rup­tions in the move­ment of es­sen­tial car­go, in­clud­ing goods for hos­pi­tals. How­ev­er, once talks com­menced, ten­sions were re­solved through open di­a­logue.

On the mat­ter of work­ing con­di­tions, An­nisette high­light­ed ro­dent in­fes­ta­tions, as­sert­ing that many im­ages be­ing cir­cu­lat­ed are out­dat­ed. He said ef­forts are made to sani­tise the en­vi­ron­ment but pest con­trol re­mains a chal­lenge, par­tic­u­lar­ly due to the prox­im­i­ty of Na­tion­al Flour Mills.

Ven­ti­la­tion is an­oth­er long­stand­ing con­cern but he said ef­forts to pro­vide ba­sic re­lief such as fans have been blocked by Cus­toms and Ex­cise reg­u­la­tions.

“So, our hands are tied,” he ex­plained.

A work­er, who spoke on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, con­firmed staff re­sumed work and that An­nisette asked for two weeks to ad­dress their con­cerns.

An­nisette al­so weighed in on the re­trench­ment of thou­sands of Com­mu­ni­ty-Based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme (CEPEP) and Forestry Di­vi­sion work­ers.

Some 10,500 work­ers were af­fect­ed af­ter CEPEP ter­mi­nat­ed over 300 con­trac­tors last Fri­day.

Re­spond­ing to re­cent com­ments from Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Pub­lic Util­i­ties and for­mer trade union­ist Clyde El­der, who re­ferred to the CEPEP dis­missals as “col­lat­er­al dam­age,” An­nisette said, “I would have nev­er made that kind of state­ment. It’s not a thou­sand peo­ple, it’s house­holds ... 10,000 work­ers means about 40,000 peo­ple af­fect­ed.”

He urged Gov­ern­ment to re­con­sid­er its ap­proach and ad­vo­cat­ed for a re­vamp of the CEPEP pro­gramme, call­ing for greater in­vest­ment in up­skilling and long-term em­ploy­ment strate­gies. He warned against pun­ish­ing work­ers for al­leged mis­con­duct by con­trac­tors or po­lit­i­cal­ly con­nect­ed en­ti­ties.

“You have to speak truth to pow­er and if some­thing is wrong, even with­in your house, you have to cor­rect it. If you don’t cor­rect it, what hap­pens to your chil­dren? What hap­pens to your house­hold?”