Mayadunne committee submits report on JCT cranes to President
The committee report on the issues pertaining to the procurement of cranes for the expanded Jaya Container Terminal (JCT) and now installed at the East Container Terminal (ECT) has been submitted to the Presidential Secretariat on Tuesday.
Committee head and former Ports and Shipping Ministry Secretary M.M.P.K. Mayadunne told the Business Times on Thursday that the committee report was submitted on September 1.
He noted that they had been requested to look into five areas namely: JCT; method adopted in the procurement of cranes; reason for the stalling of construction work at the JCT; party responsible for stalling work at the terminal that was based on the cabinet decision; and recommendations for the JCT and ECT.
Mr. Mayadunne said that construction work for the necessary infrastructure at the JCT and procurement of cranes for the said terminal were to take 18 months. Both were said to have obtained cabinet approval.
However subsequently the cranes had been brought down but construction work at the JCT had not started at all, he noted.
These matters have been looked into and the report also makes recommendations on the work at the JCT and ECT terminals but Mr. Mayadunne did not elaborate on this.
The cranes meant to be installed at the JCT terminal had been shifted to the ECT since no infrastructure was available for the cranes to be fitted.
Meanwhile, Shipper’s Academy CEO Rohan Masakorala told the Business Times that with shipping lines planning their routing for the next two to three years in line with the global economic situation and markets, in their current decision making they may look at Sri Lanka as having capacity issues in the coming years. In this respect, he pointed out that the development and operationalisation of the ECT is vital at this point.
“We could have attracted two million TEUs more if we had the right infrastructure in place,” he said. In addition he said that a government decision is what is being expected any time soon and in the wake of the global developments in other ports getting customers back to Colombo is not easy.
With the Colombo International Container Terminal reaching capacity by last November by now Colombo would have faced congestion if the usual growth continued, he noted.
It will take until early 2022 to get the new cranes required for the ECT and so the authorities need to act now to increase capacity and continue increased growth at the Colombo port, he said.