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Hartal spawns fresh container congestion at Chittagong port

DWAIPAYAN BARUA, Chittagong
Transport of export and import goods to and from Chittagong port was badly hit during the 84-hour countrywide hartal imposed by the BNP-led 18-party alliance as violence on the streets and highways disrupted vehicular movement.
The port is now suffering from fresh container congestion, as the shutdown hampered timely delivery of import goods from the port a lot.
None of the 17 private inland container depots (ICDs) located in and around the port city received any truck or covered van laden with export goods from the factories at different parts of the country in the last four days.
The export goods are usually received at the ICDs to be stuffed into containers before sending to the port.
During the shutdown, some of the ICDs were able to send around 800 TEUs (twenty-foot equivalent units) of export containers to the port in the night time while around 2,400 TEUs of export containers got stranded in the depots.
Six container carriers of KDS Logistics, an ICD at Sitakunda area on Dhaka-Chittagong highway, faced vandalism of the hartal supporters while carrying goods to the port on Monday.
A total of 4,112 TEUs of containers laden with imported goods brought from the port earlier for unloading also
remained stockpiled in these ICDs, as the importers failed to send trucks or covered vans for them, said Ruhul Amin Sikder, secretary of Bangladesh Inland Container Depots Association.
Activities in the ICDs were directly disrupted due to the shutdown, he said.
Departure of a feeder vessel, Smiley Lady, scheduled to leave the port yesterday was delayed by a day, as most of the export cargoes bound for the ship could not reach the port in time, said an official of PIL Bangladesh, local agent of the ship.
On an average, 400 TEUs of containers were delivered from the port during the hartals, much lower from its regular deliver}' of around 2,000TEUs.
According to the Chittagong Port Authority (CPA), the port's import container storage exceeded its capacity of 23,375 TEUs on the second day of the hartals, while around 24,000 TEUs of import containers were lying in the port yards till yesterday afternoon.
The congestion is not creating any problem in the yards now, but the situation would get worse if new shutdown is enforced in the next couple of weeks, officials of shipping agents said.
CPA Secretary Syed Farhad Uddin Ahmed, however, hoped the situation would come back to normalcy with the end of the hartals yesterday.