Chennai Strike Ends

Container truck drivers at India's southeastern Port of Chennai called off their strike following intense negotiations between the strikers, port officials and terminal management.

Truckers struck work Wednesday night without any prior notice, complaining that stringent checks enforced by Customs and security agencies were resulting in detention of vehicles at terminal entry gates for long hours.

Under an agreement reached late Thursday, the port authority will allocate a dedicated gate for exports, open an additional gate for outbound traffic, and implement new measures to monitor and control traffic flow. At the meeting, Customs also called on officials to speed export documentation scrutiny.
"Necessary infrastructure facilities will be provided for opening a dedicated gate for all outgoing traffic," the port chairman assured the stakeholders.
Port officials said freight movements were returning to normal Friday after the abrupt stoppage virtually prevented export containers from reaching the terminal, and slowed import deliveries to customers and storage facilities outside the port area.

The port reported a sharp drop in truck gate activity as the terminal had a backlog of over 8,000 20-foot equivalent units, mostly imports, waiting to be cleared from its yards as of Friday morning.

Officials said coordinated efforts were being made to accelerate clearance of accumulated boxes.
Chennai, India's second-largest container hub, handled 1.14 millionTEUs in fiscal 2008-09. Volume for the April-December period, the first nine months of fiscal 2009-10, totaled 895,000 TEUs.

- The Journal of Commerce.