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Three ships are set to leave the Chittagong Port on Sunday morning without carrying complete consignment as export goods could not reach these vessels due to the ongoing transport strike, raising further concerns about container congestion.
Port sources told The Business Post that the vessels AS Sicilia, Spirit of Bangkok and Xpress Lhotse are scheduled to leave the port partly empty as containers carrying export goods such as readymade garments, jute items and frozen food never arrived in time.
Container volume at the port was 33,330 TEUs on Friday, but it increased to 36,400 TEUs on Saturday. Besides, container volume at 19 private Inland Container Depots were 51,000 TEUs on Saturday, an increase from 41,000 TEUs on Friday.
The Chittagong port has a storage capacity of 49,000 TEUs, while the 19 ICDs have a capacity of 78,000 TEUs.
On the issue, Chittagong Port Authority Secretary Mohammad Omar Faruque said, “For the second day in a row, the transportation of containers and other goods by road remains halted. However, unloading of goods from the ships is going on as usual.
“The pre-shipping of all kinds of export goods is done at 19 ICDs, which also handle the post-shipment of 36 types of imported goods.”
Bangladesh Inland Container Depot Association’s Secretary Ruhul Amin Biplob said, “Saturday’s situation was more complicated than Friday. The ICDs were transporting goods using their own vehicles, but had to stop after facing pressure from transport owners’ organisations.
“Several ships currently anchored at the port remained idle throughout Saturday due to non-arrival of containers, even though they were scheduled to leave the port with export goods.”
Ali Hossain, manager (operation) of Crown Shipping Line private ltd – the shipping agent of a feeder vessel on Chattogram-Colombo route named AS Sicilia, said, “Our ship was scheduled to get loaded with about 1,400 TEUs containers.
“But only 10 containers had been loaded on Saturday morning, but no more arrived since noon.”
AS Sicilia, currently berthing at the port’s NCT-2 jetty, loaded 673 TEUs containers on Friday and Saturday mornings. But the ship now has to leave partly empty if the port authorities do not grant this vessel additional stay, he added.
Port sources said ship owners will have to pay extra charges to extend their stay at the port which is at least $1,000 – $3,000. Export goods that cannot be shipped in their scheduled times will get delayed by at least a week.
Apart from container transports, no goods from the port have been transported out by road in the last two days. About 6,000 trucks carry goods from the port to various destinations in the country on average per day, including on weekends and other holidays.
But due to the ongoing transport strike, the once busy jetty gates of the port are silent for two days.
The government recently increased diesel and kerosene prices by Tk 15 per litre due to the consistent rise in fuel prices in the global market. Transport owners stopped transporting goods and passengers on Friday to protest against the hike, saying the government had not adjusted transport fares accordingly.
“The garment sector is suffering the most due to the container transport crisis,” said Syed Nazrul Islam, first vice-president of the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association.
He also called for an immediate withdrawal of the strike to protect the country’s economy from further damage.
Despite the severe crisis in the freight transport sector, transportation owners say they will not withdraw this strike unless diesel prices are reduced or freight rates are increased.
In Chattogram, transport workers took to the streets in support of the strike, blocking the movement of goods and passenger transports. Workers also blocked the road at the Tigerpass intersection in the port city on Saturday morning.
During this time, various private transports got stuck on the road. The traffic police later managed to normalise the traffic in this area.
Despite the container congestion at the port, transportation of bulk cargo – making up almost 75 per cent of total imports –remained normal via rivers during the strike on Friday and Saturday, said the Water Transportation Cell, an authority that manages goods transport from the port by waterways.
WTA sources added that an adequate number of lighter ships were allocated for transporting about 1.20 lakh tonnes of goods on Sunday.
