The Hindu Business Line : Rain hits operations at Kolkata, Paradip ports

Incessant rain in the past few days have thrown operations at Kolkata and Paradip ports totally out of gear. The loading and movement of freight trains under South Eastern Railway (SER) and East Coast Railway (ECoR) has been badly hit.

“At Haldia dock, the average daily handling of cargo has dropped by about one-third,” according to a spokesman for the dock. “The hatches of the ships in berth cannot be opened in rain.” The Haldia dock normally handles about 1,20,000 tonnes of cargo on an average every day.

On Saturday, berthing of two tankers became impossible due to the inclement weather. The cargo handling operations cannot be undertaken also because some of the cranes have been made inoperational apprehending probable accidents in storms and rains. The poor rates of loading and unloading, it is feared, will lengthen the queue of ships waiting for berth.

Normal operations have also been badly hit at Kolkata dock system where the container throughput has dropped by 30 per cent to around 700 TEUs per day. The handling of break-bulk cargo too, has been negligible partly because there is hardly any break-bulk ship in the dock.

The situation is much worse at Paradip where the daily output has dropped by more than 50 per cent to around 50,000 tonnes a day for the past few days. “The Met Department suggest that this type of weather might continue for a few more days and we are worried,” Mr K. Raghuramaiah, Chairman, Paradip Port Trust, told Business Line over phone from Paradip. “Output wise we will be badly hit in September.”

Manual operations

At Paradip, the mechanical iron ore handling plant is now lying idle. As a result, the loading of iron ore into ships and unloading of imported coking coal from the ships are being done manually. The manual operations take a big hit in rain. Also rain causes “caking” of iron ore and coal.

The loading of iron ore rakes at the iron ore mines in Barbil area have remained totally suspended for the last few days because of the rains, according to a SER spokesman. As a result, the daily loading of rakes has dropped to 40 from 60.

The movement of trains, both passenger and freight, on several SER routes has been hit by the flooding of railway track, particularly between Kharagpur and Bhadrak. Also breaches have developed at Dankuni, which is the inter-change point between SER and Eastern Railway (ER).

The rains have hit the ECoR railway badly, with its daily loading of freight having dropped to around 6,000 tonnes from 10,000 tonnes.

The loading of coal, accounting over 50 per cent of ECoR’s total freight traffic has been particularly hit not only by rains but also by a major derailment at Talcher. On Sunday, only three rakes could be loaded against the normal 22 rakes.

The freight movement on Kirandul-Kottavalasa (K-K) line has been hit not so much by rains as by Maoist activities and the flooding of Vizag port. The Maoists have been observing martyr’s week restricting the freight movement on the line, particularly at night.

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