Port unions oppose corporatisation move, to go ahead with stir

Terming the budget proposal to corporatise major ports as an "enabling provision" to privatise them, port workers unions today said they will go ahead with the planned indefinite strike from March 9 to protest the move.

"This is an enabling provision for privatising the ports.. we had anyways given a call for an indefinite strike from March 9 and will go ahead with it in a strong way," All-India Ports & Docks Workers Association secretary Uday Choudhary, told PTI.

In the Budget presented earlier in the day, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said the government will encourage the 12 major ports run by the government to get corporatised.

"Ports need to attract investments as well as leverage the huge land resource lying unused with them and to enable us to do so ports in public sector will be encouraged to corporatise and become companies under the Company's Act," the union leader said.

Choudhary, who works for the Mumbai Port Trust (MbPT), pointed out that it is the land banks held by the major ports which interest the private parties the most.In the context of the financial capital, he said the private parties would be interested in the MbPT's land bank while for the country's biggest container port JNPT, it is the profits that will draw them.

There are 12 major ports - Kandla, Mumbai, JNPT (Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust), Marmugao, New Mangalore, Kochi, Chennai, Ennore, VO Chidambarnar (formerly Tuticorin Port), Visakhapatnam, Paradip and Kolkata (including Haldia) which handle around 61 per cent of the country's total cargo traffic.