CHATTOGRAM, Apr 25: Congestion of containers, ships and traffic in port area will ease after construction of a delivery yard and truck terminal in the proposed Chittagong Bay Terminal as these activities will be relocated there from the Chattogram Port.
The Bay Terminal will be set up on 907 acres of land, 839 acres of which are khas land while the remaining 68 acres are owned by people of the locality.
The district administration will hand over the 68 acres of land to Chattogram Port Authority (CPA) by May 30, and the construction work of the container delivery yard and truck terminal will start soon afterwards.
CPA Chairman Commodore Zulfiqur Aziz said this at an exchange of views meeting with the media on Tuesday, organised on the occasion of the port's 131st founding anniversary at Shaheed Md Fazlur Rahman Munshi auditorium of the CPA.
Chattogram Port, the prime seaport of Bangladesh, started its journey on April 25 in 1888. The CPA observes the day as Port Day.
Member (finance) of the CPA Md Quamrul Amin, Member (harbour and marine) Commodore Shaheen Rahman, Member (engineering) Captain Khondakar Akhtar Hossain, Director (traffic) Md Golam Sarwar and CPA Secretary Omar Faruk were present at the meeting.
The CPA chairman said the process of handing over 68 acres of land to the port authority for the construction of Bay Terminal is now at the final stage. Chattogram Deputy Commissioner's office which prepared a 'field book' of the acquisition of the land has already sent it to the Ministry of Land.
Regarding the 839 acres of khas land for the Bay Terminal, he said the process of leasing out the land was delayed due to legal complications.
However, the DC of Chattogram would take steps to speed up the process on a priority basis, he added.
Earlier, the CPA had requested the DC basis several times to take steps to speed up the process on priority as the port feels that it is urgent to take up the Bay Terminal construction as one of the fast-track projects of the government.
The technical and financial survey of the Bay Terminal has been conducted by the German-based consulting firm Sellhorn-HPC-KS Joint Venture.
The CPA chairman said the turnaround time of vessels at the port was 2.75 days recently, but it has now been reduced to 2.58 days.
"We are holding meetings at regular intervals and having interactions with the port users and businesses to make the port a business community-friendly one," he said.
Regarding the procurement of cargo handling equipment, he said the port authority has taken steps to make the New Mooring Container Terminal fully operational. To this end, the authority has recently installed nine rubber-tyred gantry cranes, four straddle carriers, five container movers and one rail-mounted gantry crane.
Besides, letter of credit (L/C) has been opened to procure six ship-to-shore gantry cranes, two RTGs and one mobile harbour crane. Also, the process of procuring four more ship-to-shore gantry cranes, nine RTGs and three more straddle carriers is underway.
In 2017, the CPA handled 8,52,46,948 metric tonnes of cargo and 2.667 million TEUs (20 foot equivalent unit) of containers.
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