Operations at the Haldia Dock Complex (HDC) have come to a bare minimum with almost all labour hands unwilling to return to work after a crane operator with a private berth handling company, IRC, tested COVID-19 positive on April 2, 2020, sources informed SteelMint.
A massive sanitisation drive was undertaken at Berth no. 13 of HDC and adjoining areas, including mooring rope, jetty and MHC at HDC after Mohammad Bilal tested positive for COVID-19. He had returned from the Nizamuddin conference.
All safety measures like providing masks, gloves, sanitisers are being provided to all the staff. The port has appealed to the unions and staff and all stakeholders to support its efforts to continue the operations which are essential for maintaining the supply lines.
No exports have been received. A source informed that the G.C. Berth office is still under CISF control and no one is allowed to go in. It is understood that out of six officers sitting inside the GCB, three have been told to go for complete isolation for 14 days and the remaining four are under home quarantine. After seven days they will be checked again by doctors.
“From the above view, it seems that HDC will take more time to return to normalcy as far as port operations are concerned since no labourers are willing to resume duty fearing the COVID-19 case outbreak at Haldia Port,” a source said.
Partial operations
Certain operations are still on and these include handling of commodities like thermal coal and crude oil (all oil jetties are functioning). A source informed that handling of steam coal has to be done otherwise many power plants would come to a standstill. For instance, thermal coal is loaded and sent to Tamil Nadu Electricity Board (TNEB) while several consignments of steam coal come in for the Kolaghat thermal power station in West Bengal.
As per sources, a vessel laden with coking coal was idling at berth number 4, with cargo operations stopped from April 3. At berth number 13, cargo operations of a vessels carrying manganese ore was stopped from April 2 while at berth number 4B, berthed from April 1, discharging of limestone/cargo operations have been stopped from April 3. Loading of thermal coal through conveyor belt (single loader) happened on April 5 at berth number 4.
A vessel with nitric acid arrived at berth number 7 and, after clearance from the Port Medical Team, operations started almost five hours later while discharge of paraxylene was completed on March 3 at berth number 3, and the vessel was waiting to shift to No. 6 to discharge mono ethylene glycol.
In the container yard, few trailers were moved in during the April 2 night shift to take the import deliveries to the container freight stations (CFS) which were cleared from the docks. Since there was no one at the GCB, the traffic manager had to come to the Chiranjibpur administrative building to sign delivery documents.
Force Majeure
Post the COVID-19 outbreak, KoPT has invoked the Force Majeure clause since March 22 and handling of iron ore has been completely stopped since the main importing country was China, the source said, adding that handling of coking coal coming in from Australia has also been stopped, as well as for commodities like limestone and manganese ore.
As a result, only those ships on call, which had already been called in, were not returned, the source said, adding that some vessels were already within the docks and here too unloading work was completed and the vessels were released.
In a trade circular dated April 5, 2020, KoPT stated that, “In consideration of difficulties being faced by stakeholders, major port trusts may consider COVID-19 as a valid ground for invoking Force Majeure clause on port activities and port operations also…”
Several Indian ports have invoked the Force Majeure clause in the face of the outbreak of COVID-19. These include Dhamra, Karaikal, Gopalpur, Gangavaram, Krishnapatnam and Kolkata Port Trust on the east coast and Adani-Mundra, Hazira, Angre, as well as all 44 ports under the Gujarat Maritime Board (GMB) on the west coast.
~By Madhumita Mookerji
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