KOCHI: Container movement from the Vallarpadam International Container Transshipment Terminal (ICTT) resumed on Thursday after the coordination committee of container carrier owners called off its strike protesting against the ban on parking along Container Terminal Road. The decision followed an understanding reached at a meeting convened by Minister for Ports Kadannappally Ramachandran.
The meeting held at the Ernakulam Guesthouse on Wednesday evening lasted over five hours before container carrier owners agreed to climb down and resume services.
“We were given an assurance that a combined parking facility for around 800 container trailers will be readied in three months till which time parking would be allowed on select stretches on Container Terminal Road, to be identified by a committee chaired by the District Collector very shortly,” said Tomy Thomas, secretary of Cochin Container Carrier Owners Welfare Association, which spearheaded the protest.
He claimed that a committee comprising representatives of the Motor Vehicles Department, police, transporters, trade unions, Cochin Port Trust (CPT), and DP World would identify safe stretches where parking could be allowed without posing danger to motorists.
According to the association, parking space for only 150 container trailers was available at present at the facility being developed by BPCL near ICTT and another facility at Bolgatty. Once the parking yard being developed by BPCL was fully operational, it can accommodate 200 to 250 container trailers, while another 100 trailers can be parked at a facility to be developed by Indian Oil Corporation on a nearby two-acre plot alongside its pump.
Mr. Thomas said another 100 to 150 trailers could be accommodated at the facility to be developed on a two-acre plot near the second Goshree Bridge, which was previously used to operate a concrete mixing unit by a Kochi metro contractor.
The three-day strike led to the piling of hundreds of containers at ICTT.
Earlier during the course of the strike, CPT had shot down container carrier operators’ allegation of lack of adequate parking space on the ground that space was available for parking 310 trailers at the facility on Willingdon Island, while the space available at Vallarpadam could accommodate 445 trailers. No other port in India has earmarked so much of land for parking facilities, CPT sources said.
