The All-India Port and Dock Workers Federation has urged the Shipping Ministry to take steps to permit ports to carry out their own dredging operations by inviting competitive tenders and involving all interested parties.
In a letter to the Secretary, Ministry of Shipping, the All India Port and Dock Workers Federation General Secretary, Mr P.M. Mohammed Haneef, pointed out that maintenance dredging cost was one of the major expenditures of the ports and the expenses incurred by them to carry out the work through contract has increased tremendously.
Although the port administration makes all efforts to improve the financial performance of the ports by improving the productivity on one side and restricting and controlling all avoidable expenses on the other, no serious and effective steps were taken for optimising the cost of dredging, he said.
Questionable criteria
On the other hand, all the major ports of the country are made to incur exorbitant dredging cost because of various decisions/guidelines and pre-qualification norms imposed by the Ministry. Moreover, those who do not satisfy the pre-qualification criteria are banned from participating in the tenders, he added.
He said the opinion of experts was that the stringent pre-qualifying criteria stipulated have no relation to the aim to create a channel of particular length, width and depth and it is intended to entertain foreign cartels.
The Indian dredging companies, which had successful track records, are disqualified because of the failure from the pre-qualifying criteria especially in terms of financial criteria prescribed, he said and added that this situation prevents the contractors, who have really achieved creation of channel at guaranteed depth at major ports and quoted low rates.
Further, the proposals sent by several Port Trust boards to procure their own dredgers to meet their dredging requirements are either kept without taking any decision or rejected, he added.
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