The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh News : Capacity building: barge owners face hurdles

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Monday, Sep 24, 2007
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Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh

Capacity building: barge owners face hurdles

Correspondent

‘Authorities keen on new barges than modifying existing ones’

Kakinada: Steel barge owners have alleged that their plans to increase the existing capacity of the barges could not be pushed through because of “harassment being meted out by authorities.”

“The authorities are more interested in bringing new barges rather than adding more tonnage to the existing barges. Under some pretext or the other, the port authorities are creating hurdles,” complains B. Ramamurthy, president of the Steel Barge Owners’ Welfare Association.

Additional tonnage

He told The Hindu on Sunday that a few owners had already proved that more tonnage could be created by modifying the existing barges from 300 tonnes to 400 tonnes. Four such barges, he said, were already on stream. “I have also commissioned a modified Swarna Bharati barge of 500-tonne capacity a couple of days ago,” Dr. Ramamurthy said and felt that an additional 10,000 tonnes capacity could be created easily by increasing the length of each barge from 27 metres to 31 metres, instead of going for construction of 12 more barges, which would hardly add 6,000 tonnes.

He said the barge owners were now being harassed when they approach authorities for clearance for increasing the existing capacity of barges. “Officers are insisting on payment of bar channel fee at Re.1 per tonne from 1993, which runs into a few lakhs of rupees in the case of each cargo boat. The government should drop the fee, which is not there in other anchorage ports,” he said. He also questioned the propriety in insisting of bar channel fee when a committee constituted by the Minister for Ports was going through all the issues pertaining to port development and was likely to submit its report next month.

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