December 2, 2020: The Sri Lanka Ports Authority (SLPA) assured that the current congestion at the Colombo Port, due to the delays in clearing containers as a result of the prevailed employee shortage affected by the Covid-19 situation, would be solved within a week.
SLPA Chairman General Daya Ratnayake told The Morning that around 20,000 containers were still held up at the Colombo Port as clearing of the goods has slowed down.
“Within seven days, this will be solved,” he added.
He, however, denied any vessels bypassing Colombo due to the congestion. He noted that there was an issue several weeks ago, but that it had now been rectified with the employees returning back to work.
Furthermore, Gen. Ratnayake said the number of containers for export had been reduced to around 500 from 800 to 1000 a day due to the export restrictions and that it had nothing to do with the SLPA operations.
Assuring the operations at present continued at normal pace, the SLPA Chairman said once the container congestion issue was sorted, port operations would be 100% normalised.
A few weeks ago, the SLPA posed a huge threat to the continuous supply of the daily essentials to the market, as over 40 vessels have already bypassed without unloading the containers at Jaya Container Terminals (JCT) due to lack of employees. As a result, concerns were raised over the continuous supply of essential food.
It is learnt that many ships that were supposed to unload at JCT had bypassed and instead gone to the nearest other destinations due to the Covid-19 threat, with over 30 employees being reported positive for Covid-19. The authority had also requested some vessels to divert their destinations instead of coming to Colombo directly as there is a serious delay due to the lack of port employees.
The SLPA Chairman, however, assured that there wouldn’t be any delays due to the operation delays.
In the meantime, Essential Food Commodities Importers and Traders’ Association (EFCITA) President G. Rajendran also said the delays have now been rectified and asked the public not to panic as the supply of essentials has not been affected due to the delays in loading the shipment.
Source: nation.lk
