Colombo port hit by COVID-19

Sri Lanka Port Authority (SLPA) is currently re-hiring retired staff in a bid to ensure the smooth flow of operations at the port as a result of an increasing number of workers being detected with COVID-19 and many more being quarantined.

SLPA Chairman Gen. Daya Ratnayaka told the Business Times that they have been asking vessels to “move on” thereby allowing them to bypass Colombo port due to the congestion due to the low worker turnout as about 30 have been detected with coronavirus.

He noted that already there are about 106 that have been quarantined and another 65 home quarantined due to the spread of the virus at the Colombo port.

In this respect, Gen. Ratnayaka explained that they had held discussions with the vessel operators and industry and worked out a strategy to deploy retired staff in the highly specialized jobs of gantry crane operators and other work.

“We have rostered a fairly good number” of this staff, he said adding that this new system has been in operation since Monday.

The SLPA Chairman said that since the last few days the situation has aggravated and it is expected that the situation will turnaround “hopefully by mid next week.”

Moreover, he noted that they had also discussed ways to overcome the inter terminal changes of ships and added that all of this is incurring costs as main lines have contracts with terminals.

Gen. Ratnayaka also explained that this situation had arisen since October when the outbreak of the second wave of the COVID- 19 Minuwangoda cluster broke out and ever since Gampaha was closed.

On average there is a delay of about four days, the Chairman said adding that until Monday there had been vessels bypassing Colombo port with a total of seven MSC vessels and six Maersk vessels. “It’s a very fluid situation,” he said.