Shutdown slows Chittagong Port

The ongoing shutdown took a toll on Chittagong Port, as the loading and delivery of goods slowed yesterday.
Trucks and vans were unable to operate due to the countrywide hartal called by Jamaat-e-Islami to protest the prosecution of its leaders.
A total of 1,624 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) of export containers were loaded onto vessels in the last 24 hours, which was 2,644 TEUs on Sunday, according to data from the Chittagong Port Authority.
Delivery of goods from the port also suffered substantially; 202 TEUs of import containers were delivered from the port till 8am yesterday, which was 1,141 TEUs the previous day.
Such a slowdown was a result of failure to transport export containers from the different inland container depots to the port for the strike.
With security assistance from the police and Bangladesh Border Guards, some ICDs took an initiative to transport export containers overnight to the port.
Around 357 TEUs of export containers were transported from different ICDs, including KDS Logistics, BM Container and Portlink Logistics -- all located in Sitakunda -- from night time till early morning yesterday, officials said.
A total of 2,452 TEU containers were stranded at 16 different off-docks, they said.
Md Ruhul Amin Sikder, secretary of Bangladesh Inland Container Depot Association, said the CPA security department helped coordinate the transport.
CPA officials said 1,646 TEU import containers were unloaded from vessels in the port jetties, while 32,663 tonnes of goods were unloaded from different vessels at the outer anchorage till 8am yesterday.
The shutdown had a limited impact on activities inside the port as containers were handled at 24 vessels at different jetties and the outer anchorage, CPA Secretary Syed Farhad Uddin Ahmed said.
He, however, said the delivery of goods was hampered as trucks or vans could not enter the port.
He hoped the situation would improve after today's shutdown.
There were 21,528 TEUs at different jetties, which have a capacity to store 30,000 TEUs.