It\u2019s a tall order in a culture that stops work for statutory holidays, and in which workers have a tendency to arrive for shifts late and leave early.<\/p>\n
But the need for action is perceived as urgent, with ship turnaround times ranging from two to five days, and imported dry bulk cargoes sitting on quaysides for up to 38 days.<\/p>\n
Indian port officials acknowledge that shift changeovers currently cost as much as three hours in lost productivity every day. They agree that the time could be cut to just 30 minutes, which would save 12 hours for a bulk carrier.<\/p>\n
And they acknowledge that there are opportunities to improve labour productivity in the gang-based system, said to be overmanned. A port official, who wished to remain anonymous, says: \u201cEnforcement of discipline within the unionised workforce is difficult,and a poor work ethic, such as the tendency to report late and break early lowers productivity of the individual and well as the gang\u2019s productivity in the shift.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nevertheless, employees aren\u2019t against the move to round-the-clock working all year round; they recognise they\u2019ll have to take it on board to complete internationally, according to a leading trade unionist. Mohammed Haneef,general secretary of the All India Port and Dock Workers Federation, wants them to enter into a \u2018something-for- something\u2019 arrangement.\u201cIf India has to compete internationally, then roundthe- clock working of ports is essential \u2013 provided facilities are given to the workers. The management of ports should also share the gains arising from the new arrangement with the workers.\u201d Implementation of a \u2018hot seat\u2019 exchange system, as ordered by the country\u2019s Ministry of Shipping might get rid of losses due to shift changes, but there are a host of other areas that will need radical operational changes too.<\/p>\n
There is no co-ordination of effort around activities such as health clearance, quarantine, customs and independent sample collection, and much of the work is done on an \u2018office hours\u2019 basis. Customs, for example, works for only five days a week, from 0915 hrs to 1745 hrs, and duties can be paid on only five and a half days a week. An out of hours skeleton staffing arrangement is proposed.<\/p>\n
Mr Haneef clearly has a lot on his plate if the 63,000 direct employees and 30,000 contractors are going to make the serious assault on delays demanded by the government. He\u2019s going to start with union meetings at a national level to reach a consensus before allowing any changes to the existing system.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
India wants to ramp up operations at the 13 ports it controls to 24\/7 operation by December this year.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"sponsor":[],"class_list":["post-1162","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-container-cargo-handling"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1162","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1162"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1162\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1162"},{"taxonomy":"sponsor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sponsor?post=1162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}