)
Fertiliser handlers at sea ports, particularly in Visakhapatnam Port, are incurring huge demurrage losses over the last three weeks due to the agitation against bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh.
Owing to bandhs and rasta rokos, as against the usual attendance of 5,000 contract workers, the Vizag port is seeing only 2,500-3,000 workers. “The low labour turnout is affecting fertiliser bagging at port warehouses, resulting in delays and high demurrage losses,” K Krishna Kumar, president, Visakhapatnam Stevedores Association said.
The port authorities complain that the workers, who come from surrounding villages and places, are not been able to attend to work due to the lack of proper transport, mainly due to the bandhs here.
Though handling these posts at Visakhapatnam, Gangavaram and Kakinada — is totally mechanised, a huge number of manpower is required for bagging and loading then into trucks and rail racks.
“Because of the labour shortage, Vizag port is incurring additional Rs 3-4 lakh as demurrage on each rack to Railways for a delay of 5-6 hours,” said Kumar. Generally, it takes nine hours for loading fertiliser bags in one rail rack. Now, this is taking 14-15 hours. Fertiliser handlers at Gangavaram and Kakinada ports are also facing issues like shortage of trucks.
“Over the last three weeks, we are getting only 50 per cent of the required trucks a day. If the situation continues there would be a dearth of space at the dockyards for future fertiliser imports,” say sources at Gangavaram port.
