DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan is urg­ing the trade union rep­re­sent­ing port work­ers to set­tle ne­go­ti­a­tions with the Fi­nance Min­istry and Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer.

Speak­ing at the com­mis­sion­ing of two state-of-the-art port scan­ners at the Port of Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day, Sinanan ref­er­enced last year’s protest ac­tion by the Sea­men and Wa­ter­front Work­ers Union (SWW­TU), which dis­rupt­ed port op­er­a­tions and pre­vent­ed a new record for con­tain­er scans.

“This (last) year, 2024, the Port of Port-of-Spain should have bro­ken the record for the amount of con­tain­ers pass­ing through, and be­cause of that two-month pe­ri­od where some ves­sels by­passed us, we were not able to reach the fig­ures that would have shown that the econ­o­my is a vi­brant econ­o­my. Be­cause right now, we have more con­tain­ers com­ing in­to Trinidad than we had in the boom times,” Sinanan lament­ed.

He is urg­ing the union to meet the CPO halfway and be flex­i­ble in ne­go­ti­a­tions. “The port can­not pay some­thing that the port can­not af­ford. We are at the ta­ble; we want to set­tle these ne­go­ti­a­tions. We are not say­ing that we are not con­sid­er­ing an in­crease. We are con­sid­er­ing the in­crease.

The in­crease has been put for­ward by the CPO. One par­ty can­not hold to a hard po­si­tion, and then we reach nowhere.

“I’m just hop­ing that good sense will pre­vail and we can have a po­si­tion where both the em­ploy­ees will be sat­is­fied, the port will be able to meet its oblig­a­tions, and the Port of Port-of-Spain and Point Lisas tie for first place for ports through­out the Caribbean.”

The Port Au­thor­i­ty se­cured an in­junc­tion bar­ring port protests in No­vem­ber last year af­ter haul­ing the SWW­TU be­fore the in­dus­tri­al court. Port work­ers be­gan protests in Au­gust over stalled ne­go­ti­a­tions, with the un­rest ex­tend­ing to the Scar­bor­ough port in To­ba­go by Oc­to­ber.

Ef­forts to reach SWW­TU pres­i­dent gen­er­al Michael An­nisette were un­suc­cess­ful.

High­way ex­pan­sion up­date

Sinanan al­so pro­vid­ed an up­date on the high­way ex­pan­sion project, con­firm­ing that it re­mains on sched­ule, with both main lanes ex­pect­ed to be op­er­a­tional by the end of the month. “They’re work­ing on the north­bound—the fi­nal part—and we’re still on sched­ule to have every­thing, at least the main line, com­plet­ed be­fore the end of this month, while the an­cil­lary work on the sides will con­tin­ue.”

The widen­ing of the Solomon Ho­choy High­way be­tween Chase Vil­lage and Ch­agua­nas was ini­tial­ly ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed by Au­gust 2024, at a cost of $65 mil­lion. Work be­gan in Jan­u­ary and re­mains on track for com­ple­tion be­fore the end of the year.