The Hindu Business Line : Call for tighter security measures at major ports

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New Delhi Feb. 20 The Union Minister of Shipping, Road Transport and Highways, Mr T.R. Baalu, has called for enhanced security measures at the major ports in the wake of possibility of terrorist attacks on vital installations.

He said modern equipment and latest technology should be deployed for Container Cargo Scanning to ensure security arrangements apart from the facilities in place for the custom purposes.

The Minister called upon the port chairpersons to vigorously take up the execution of projects under National Maritime Development Programme (NMDP) to ensure on-time completion of the programme by 2011-12.

Mr Baalu told them to prepare a work-plan and undertake weekly review of the NMDP projects and bring the problem areas to his notice, so that corrective action can be taken expeditiously, according to an official communication.

He was satisfied that five major ports — Vishakhapatnam, Chennai, Mumbai Kolkata and Kandla — are poised to cross the 50 million tonnes (MT) of traffic handling during the current financial year.

The 12 major ports have handled 378.89 MT of traffic during April 2006-January 2007 as against 348.05 MT during the same period of the previous financial year.

Mr Baalu asked the officials to prepare a compilation of projects pending with various arms of the Government such as the Planning Commission, the Ministry of Law or the Ministry of Finance and said that efforts would be made to get clearance for such projects expeditiously.

The Mumbai Port Trust Chairperson informed that the process has been initiated for appointment of consultant for establishing a new cruise shipping facility near Gateway of India under NMDP.

The Cochin Port Trust Chairperson informed about the pace of implementation of the International Cruise Terminal.

The JNPT Chairperson informed that the ongoing project of improvement of road connectivity would be completed by December this year.

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