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Poor delivery of food grains creates Ctg port congestion

Staff Correspondent, Ctg
Poor delivery of imported food grains due to godown shortage and unavailability of transports is creating congestion at the Chittagong port.
The slow delivery that has already slowed down the activities of the port almost to half has been forcing six rice-laden vessels lie at different jetties and another four vessels at the outer anchorage for over a week.
According to sources, seven vessels carrying a total of 53,936 tonnes of imported rice of Food Department arrived at Chittagongportonjuly 14.
But. due to shortage of silos in tire city and lack of transports required to carry the food
grains outside the district these vessels had been lying at different jetties for over a week.
Under these circumstances a serious congestion is feared to arise at the port unless immediate steps are taken to speed up the delivery of the food grains.
At the back drop of the situation Chittagong Port Authority (CPA) in a meeting with other authorities concerned urged the Department of Food to take immediate measures to speed up the delivery of the food grains.
The meeting underscored the need for speeding up the process of restoring the Halishahahar Godowns for Food Department from Bangladesh Export Processing
Zone Authority (Bepza) to overcome the godown shortage.
In the meeting it was decided that the Food Department would take step to store the food grains in tire godowns owned by other state-owned enterprises in the port city until space crisis is solved.
If necessary the department would hire private godowns, said the sources present in the meeting.
“Besides, in the meeting we have also urged the Food Department to take delivery of the food grains by lighterage vessels from the vessels staying at the outer anchorage,” said CPA Director (traffic and security) Lt Col Feroz Ahmed, who
also presided over the meeting.
When asked Acting Regional Controller of Food M Kaiser Ali said that they were struggling hard to tackle the situation.
“As per the suggestions of the meeting we have already sent a set of proposals to the Director General of Food Department as well as to the secretary," he said.
When asked about the fare of inter-district trucks he agreed it was difficult to get inter-district trucks at a fare fixed several years back.
The truck owners were given an 18 percent raise in the fare before the price hike of fuel.
However, after the price hike of fuel they may not be able to supply trucks with the existing rate of fare.