The diversion of crude oil traffic from Haldia to Paradip has started taking a toll on the former port’s throughput.
In first two months of the current fiscal (April-May 2009-10), the Haldia dock handled a total of 5.7 million tonnes (mt), down from 7.56 mt in the same period of the previous year, thus registering more than 30 per cent drop. During the period, the crude throughput dropped from 2.3 mt to 0.7 mt.
Iron ore exports
Also, the volume of iron ore exports through the dock declined from 1.83 mt to 1.06 mt, largely due to the railway discount scheme mostly benefiting Paradip and Visakhapatnam ports but not Haldia so much.
Under the scheme, the exporters transporting the ore over a distance of more than 400 km between the mine and the port get a discount. The distance between Haldia and nearest ore mine is less than 400 km.
However, the volume of rail-borne traffic of the dock during the period posted a marginal increase at 3.36 mt (3.34 mt).
Coking coal imports
Haldia dock sources attribute this to the rise in imports of coking coal for steel plants and thermal coal for power houses. The coking coal throughput rose to 1.04 mt (0.9 mt) and thermal coal movement to 0.51 mt (0.19 mt).
Work affected
An agitation by a section of the contract labourers affected work at the dock on Monday.
Some 1,000 workers, deployed mainly for manually unloading iron ore from railway rakes, demanded, among other things, upward revision of their wages.
They complained that they got much less wages than what they were supposed to get. Also, the job opportunities for them were shrinking.
Earlier, the dock used to handle on an average five iron rakes every day, but this has since dropped to two and half.
Source: The Hindu
No comments:
Post a Comment