NAVI MUMBAI: Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust (JNPT), India’s Premier Container Port has been constantly striving to perform its duties of a strategic contributor to nation building even during the ongoing nationwide lockdown. JNPT handled 2,89,292 TEUs during the month of June-2020 which is 5.29% higher as compared to May 2020.

Shri Sanjay Sethi, IAS, Chairman, JNPT said, “JNPT will continue to step-up and extend support for the country’s economic growth. With the support of all our stakeholders, we will continue performing our duties to steadfast growth trajectory of the Port sector, and have implemented various initiatives to make the business sustainable, efficient, economical and convenient for the Export-Import community. I hope together as a nation we will come out from this crisis and emerge stronger.”

A total of 166 vessels were handled in June 2020 and the total traffic handled was 4.07 million tonnes as against 5.63 million tonnes in June-2019, which is 27.64% less.

Port maintained 89% of export volume as compared to June 2019 with the easing of lockdown restrictions and the factories opening up.

In rail operations the port handled a record 511 rakes, overtaking the previous highest monthly handling of 499 rakes in May 2020. Also the average rail coefficient of the first quarter of FY2020-21 increased to 23.40%, an improvement of 46%, as compared to 16.04% of same period last year. To facilitate faster evacuation, the port also handled 106 trains in the lockdown period to ICD Mulund as per extended gate facility which amounts to 6957 TEUs.

Moving forward, Govt. is taking steady steps to ease the ongoing lockdown and in tune with the Government guidelines, JNPT has rolled out a Standard Operating Procedure for continuity of business operations post lockdown called the ‘Continuity of Business Plan,

The JNPT Way’. This has been prepared by the team at JNPT to ensure that everyone at the port are following the guidelines laid down and are aware of the precautions JNPT is taking for its work force. The COVID 19 Task force will ensure that all employees at JNPT will follow the guidelines laid down.

Source: dst.news