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A view of the Port of Port of Spain. FILE PHOTO - SEAMEN and Waterfront Workers Trade Union (SWWTU) President General Michael Annisette took Downtown Owners and Merchant’s Association (DOMA) president Gregory Aboud to task for what he described as an "disingenuous" attempt to throw port workers under the bus, after he complained of delays and inefficiencies at the port.
Annisete, in defence of the port workers, said inefficiencies at the port were not related to the workers themselves, but to systematic issues, such as outdated equipment, archaic policies and a refusal to invest in the port and its workers.
“When you look at our infrastructure, operational and otherwise, our outdated equipment – some of which has long gone past its life cycle, the non-implementation of the memorandum of agreement, the lack of investment in the port, how dare you now come to try to throw hot water on the port workers?
“I'm not going to accept, as the president of Seaman’s Union and the general secretary of NATUC, that DOMA is going to use the port workers as some scapegoat for the inefficiencies that have nothing to do with port workers.”
In a report in a local newspaper, Aboud said, based on current measurements of units of movements at the ports, TT’s port is the slowest in the region, with ports in Jamaica, Barbados, St Lucia and St Vincent and the Grenadines operating at almost twice the movement rate. He said the nation was being damaged as a result – earning a negative outlook for the investment community and damaging TT’s trade diversification and export potential.
Annisette said Aboud ought not to compare TT’s ports to others in the region because they did not have the same experiences, or rather challenges with operational efficiency.
“You have to compare apples with apples. You cannot compare apples with sour grapes or sour lime.
“I challenge DOMA to show me any port in the world that operates with the deficiencies that we have in terms of infrastructure, in terms of investment in equipment, in terms of international best practice.
“You can’t compare TT with Jamaica, Singapore, Holland, or any of these big international ports because of the investment that was put in those ports to have the environment for the kind of productivity that they recognise that is necessary. We did not do that in Trinidad and Tobago and, therefore, we are suffering the consequences.”
Annisette recalled the negotiations between the government and port workers in 2015, when both parties agreed on a 12 per cent wage increase for the period 2014-2016. He said the agreement did not simply involve wage increases but an overhaul of the entire port system and framework.
“That was something that was negotiated under the UNC government,” he said. “Minister Stephen Cadiz was minister at the time.
“We signed an interest-based memorandum of agreement that spoke to the elimination of overtime, working at the same hours as other international ports and transforming and transitioning the port with international best practices so that the efficiencies and productivity levels would also have increased.
“It was a whole suite of things and we were at the cusp of completing it, but the Rowley-led PNM government came into power and they kicked it down the hill.”
In 2024, the then government refused to accept the terms of the 2015 agreement saying that the Chief Personnel Officer was not involved in those negotiations.
Annisette expressed confidence that the current government to make good on the 12 per cent wage increase and implement the plans that were put in the agreement, saying that if it had been done in 2015, TT would have been one of the most efficient ports in the world.
“Obviously, the port would have saved money as it relates to overtime,” he said. “I think the PNM government missed the bus on this one. They never invested materially and substantially into the port operations so that the port could have grown.”
Charran: Port problems go beyond labour
Director of Charran’s book store and president of the Confederation of Regional Business Chambers Vivek Charran said fixing labour issues alone would not solve the problems at the port.
“The problems that affect the efficiency at the port are greater and wider than simply labour,” he said. “We are talking about the overall management of the system at the port.
“We are talking about how we can get more technology and what can we use to upgrade the port and make it more efficient even before we start to talk about the people at the port.”
He pointed out that in all points of the system used in customs there are inefficiencies that would cause it to break down. If one part of that system breaks down, Charran said, the entire system is frozen.
“First of all you have a valuation. You have to submit all your documents to the valuation division and they will determine what your VAT and duty is. That is important because unless you pay that, you can’t clear your goods.
“When you talk to customs officers they would say that valuation is understaffed and at times when there are a lot of things coming in, the calculations of the value of duty on the goods takes a long time. That in itself can sometimes lead to delays. Sometimes they question the documents or the actual value of the goods, which also brings some kind of delay.
“Then you have the ASYCUDA system (a computerised management system that covers foreign trade procedures). This tends to break down. That is really a sore point because when that happens a lot of things go wrong.
“If the system is compromised at an early stage that creates a backlog, then, obviously, when it comes to the actual labour, they have a lot more to deal with than they would had the system been working efficiently.
“The other issue is, many times the goods now have to be delivered from the port, and they often deliver to warehouses across the country. At that point you have to schedule a custom officer to clear the goods. If you cannot get a custom officer, or you cannot book a custom officer to come and clear the goods your container will sit there until you can.”
He said understaffing in this area often leads to one customs officer evaluating several containers in a day, which could also lead to more inefficiency.
“When you look at all these different stops that a container has to go through, from when it arrives on ship to when it reaches the shelves, that is a lot of processes involved and if one of them goes down, it leads to a delay.”
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