With employees opposing ports corporatisation, Union Shipping Minister Nitin Gadkari on Friday said attempts were being made to find alternatives to upgrade ports and their services, beyond bringing them under the purview of the Companies Act as announced in the Budget.
“Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had told us (in the Budget) about the Companies Act, but we are looking at other alternatives beyond the Companies Act to modernise and develop the ports,” Gadkari told reporters at a Mumbai Port Trust event here.
He said his ministry was in discussions and seeking guidance from the Finance Ministry on the alternatives, but did not elaborate on what those alternatives might be.
In the Budget, Mr. Jaitley had announced the government intention to corporatise ports, saying, “ports need to attract investments as well as leverage the huge land resource lying unused with them and to enable us to do so, ports in the public sector will be encouraged to corporatise and become companies under the Company’s Act.”
Managements of major ports, including the largest container port JNPT, have welcomed the move. However, employee unions are opposed to the move and threatened to go on an indefinite strike, which was cancelled following interventions by labour commissioners and a specially constituted panel.
“All the five employee unions are still opposed to corporatisation, but we have been assured by the Indian Ports Association that our interests will be protected,” the All-India Port & Dock Workers Federation had said in a statement after withdrawing the strike call in March.
Gadkari on Friday sought to allay the fears, asserting that equity would not change hands under the corporatisation move. “Basic concept is development and modernisation. We don’t want to privatise, nor do we want to give any equity to the private people.
“We want to modernise, protect the interest of labour, and ports and at the same time improve the services of the ports to boost business and do good profits,” Mr. Gadkari said. Speaking to reporters after inaugurating an oil spill response facility for the Mumbai Harbour, Mr. Gadkari said the 12 major ports would be investing Rs.1,000 crore to set up clean power facilities and reduce their reliance on the grid power.
“The government has sanctioned a 150-MW plan for green power for ports,” he said, adding generating the required finance would not be difficult. Citing the example of the JNPT, he said it was paying up to Rs.13 per unit of grid power and had a requirement of 25 mw.
Under the plan, a hybrid project involving setting up solar and wind capacities on rooftops as well as windmills on the sea would be done, he said. The government had also appointed a consultant to check the feasibility of generating power by installing windmills on the sea, Mr. Gadkari said, adding such a technology had immense possibilities for a city like Mumbai.
“There are working projects where power is produced through four different clean sources including solar, wind, wind inside the sea and tidal energy at a single location and adopting those can help eliminate the financial capital’s reliance on the grid,” Mr. Gadkari said. He said he would will be visiting one such project during his upcoming Japan visit. Mr. Gadkari said the government was also planning to plant 5 crore trees along the 1 lakh km network of National Highways.
