Kerala - Kochi   

Port employees to stage relay fast

KOCHI: The labour unions, which have served a strike notice on the Cochin Port Trust management over the implementation of the e-port facility, have decided to launch a relay fast from Tuesday in front of the port headquarters demanding the withdrawal of the suspension of three employees.

These employees were suspended during the 23-day strike against the operationalisation of the Central Industrial Tribunal norms on new manning scales at the port. Two of the suspended employees are from the marine wing of the port while the other is from the mechanical engineering section.

Regional Labour Commissioner K.P. Shashidhar will meet port management representatives and leaders of the trade unions on Friday to discuss the issues raised by the unions regarding the implementation of the e-port programme.

Meanwhile, the port management, in a statement on Monday, said the two new tugs ordered by the port trust, one of which has already been commissioned, will be fully occupied with the port looking to new cargo and the commissioning of the International Container Transhipment Terminal (ICTT) on Vallarpadam Island. Deploying these tugs to serve the Single Point Mooring (SPM) facility of BPCL-Kochi Refinery is not a viable option for the port authorities right now, said a spokesman for the port trust on Monday. The statement was in response to the letter written by two labour trustees to the Chairman of the Cochin Port Trust suggesting that services of two tugs hired by the port authorities for operations at the SPM be terminated.

Referring to suggestions from the labour trustees that the two new tugs could be used to serve both the normal port operations and the SPM facility, he said the two hired tugs are almost fully engaged at the oil transhipment facility.

The spokesman also countered the suggestion from the labour trustees that the port was losing money on the two hired tugs.

The port was being paid for the services of the tugs by the oil company and there was no question of it losing money on the operations of the tugs serving the SPM facility, the port official said. The authorities have also made it clear that the two tugs at the SPM facility do not idle as suggested by the labour trustees in a recent letter.

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