Complete Privatisation of Container Terminals at JNPT Planned

 

Report by KEC correspondent

The government has planned to privatise the sole container terminal run by JNPT. Other four container terminals are already run by private operators.

Jawaharlal Nehru Port (JNPT) has five container terminals besides one liquid terminal. Out of the five container terminals, presently only one terminal is operated by the JNPT while the other four are already privatised and run by multinational port operators. Now global bids have been invited hand over the only terminal run by JNPT also to a private port operator. The contract for operation will be for 30 years.

The five container terminals together have capacity of handling 8.1 million Twenty-Foot Equivalent Units (TEUs). TEU is a standardised measure to indicate the capacity of container ships and terminals. During the financial year 2020-21, JNPT handled 4.7 million TEUs.

This privatisation is being strongly opposed by port workers who fear loss of jobs of large number of workers and the use of larger number of contract workers. Villagers near JNPT have also been opposing the privatisation of terminals as many villagers have not been given jobs promised to them even after a decade when their land was acquired.

 

 

 

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