The number of Indian seafarers has increased by over 60,000, according to Union Minister of State for Road Transport & Highways, Shri Mansukh L Mandaviya. While only about 92, 000 people were engaged in ship-related jobs, their number has currently gone up to 154,000, he informed.
For the period from April-August 2018, nine Ports: Kolkata (incl. Haldia), Paradip, Visakhapatnam, Kamarajar, Chennai, Cochin, New Mangalore, JNPT and Deendayal have registered positive growth in traffic. The highest growth was registered by Kamarajar Port with 17.24%.
The Inland Waterways Authority of India issued 13 standardised ship designs suitable for large barge haulage on river Ganga. This aims to serve as an enabler for domestic shipbuilding industry working on inland vessels and open possibilities for cargo and passenger movement on National Waterway-1.
German shipping giant Hapag-Lloyd informed that during September it will introduce four new direct connections from the Port of Mombasa to the UAE and India. The direct connections will include Nhava Sheva (India), Mundra (India), Khor Fakkan (UAE), Jebel Ali (UAE), Mombasa and Dar es Salaam.
The Indian Minister of State for Shipping and Finance Shri Pon Radhakrishnan informed that in order to deal with potential maritime security situations arising out of any hijacking at sea of merchant vessels with Indian crew, an Inter-Ministerial Group was created by the Government under the Ministry of Shipping.
Indian authorities detained two crewmembers and the Master of the VLCC ‘Desh Shakti’, after concluding that this ship was likely responsible for the hit-and-run collision with a fishing boat off Kerala earlier this month. The vessel reportedly made a brief halt but continued its journey ‘without bothering to undertake any rescue operations.’
Rohit Agarwal, Ship Recycling Expert at GSR Sentinels LLP, shares his view on the ship recycling industry at Alang. Mr. Agarwal says that India, Pakistan and Bangladesh have the ideal tidal conditions for ship breaking. However, the ship recycling industry has been using unacceptable conditions. Nevertheless, this seems to be changing as the Hong Kong Convention sets standards to ensure safe ship recycling.
A salvage team managed to install equipment around the container ship ‘SSL Kolkata’, on August 9. This equipment aims to offload bunker fuel from the vessel, which suffered an explosion to one of its containers and a subsequent fire during June. The vessel was carrying 464 containers.
The Indian Ministry of Shipping issued the Draft of its proposed Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) exploring shore power supply to ships in Indian ports, under the national “Green Port” project seeking to reduce air and noise pollution on major ports across India.
Another hit-and-run incident was reported off Kochi, India, after an unidentified merchant vessel hit the fishing vessel ‘Oceanic’ off Kerala in the early morning hours of Tuesday and left without providing assistance. Three people were killed and nine are missing as a result from the collision.
