Monday, March 22 2010

The plan by the Public Services Association (PSA) to have Board of Inland Revenue and Customs and Excise workers take two consecutive days of rest on March 31 and April 1 will inconvenience businesses in the country and ultimately consumers as well, who (the consumers) will be called upon to pay more for the cost of landed goods.

Many businesses, for example, food importers, hardware dealers and haberdashers are not likely to absorb costs caused by delays at, say, the Port of Port-of-Spain, the Port of Point Lisas and the nation’s other major ports but, rather, will pass them on to the consumers.

In the meantime, the Head of the Shipping Association, Rhett Chee Ping, has called on Government to sit down at the negotiating table and hammer out a deal with respect to the controversial Trinidad and Tobago Revenue Authority (TTRA) which the Administration is seeking to establish to replace Customs and Excise and Inland Revenue.

Already, Chee Ping has pointed out that last Monday’s March 16 “day of rest” resulted in a backlog of containers at the Port of Port-of-Spain. Trinidad and Tobago Manufacturers’ Association President, Greig Laughlin, noted that TTMA members encountered delays in the processing of import documents. “These days off do not help the country,” Laughlin warned. “They keep back productivity.”

However, although Customs House was closed last Monday, a backlog of containers triggered and, as noted earlier, delays in the processing of import documents. Minister of Labour, Rennie Dumas, was insistent that his ministry could only intervene if the public interest was affected. Despite concerns being expressed by the Shipping Association and TTMA Heads Dumas appeared not to accept that the public’s interest was being affected.

Meanwhile, the timing of the planned two-day period of rest, conveniently falling, as it does, between two public holidays — Spiritual Baptist Day and Good Friday — means that public service revenue workers, who take the “two days of rest” will have seven days away from their places of work. President of the Public Services Association, Watson Duke, saw the two days away from work, though, not as a shutdown but rather as a “sabbatical”.

What is particularly troubling is that although next week’s planned “days of rest” will mean that many staff members of the Customs and Excise and Board of Inland Revenue would have been off their jobs for several days this month, a committee comprising representatives of the employer and the PSA, according to Duke, had not yet met for talks. Clearly, there is an increasing need for the two parties to meet.

That level may be reached on Wednesday and Thursday of next week, when revenue workers take not one day, but two days off away from their places of employment. Will they be viewed as acting in concert for the two-day period to withhold their labour or will they continue to be held as genuinely “resting”? But then Duke, himself, in addressing revenue workers on Thursday at the Brian Lara Promenade has been quoted as stating that the earlier “rest days” were “small touches” and it was time for the “knock-out”.

Before the promised “knock-out” though, Government needs, as the Shipping Association Head, Chee Ping, has suggested “to sit with the (PSA) and the TTRA management team and work things out.” Chee Ping would note that officials at the Port of Port-of-Spain “are playing catch up right now. We have customers running around and complaining that they have to pay for storage, rent and demurrage.”

This means that ship owners and/or charterers are charging agents here for failure to have their vessels offload cargoes within stipulated times. As we stressed earlier these additional charges will be passed on, ultimately, to consumers.