Port Tariff Panel All At Sea Over Staff, Space Shortage

The much talked-about port tariff regulatory authority which has been given the task of spurring infrastructural development of 11 major ports is struggling to start off for want of manpower and an office space.

The authority has only one full-time employee who is none other than the chairman, S Sathyam, a former secretary (statistics), government of India. The only other employee is his personal assistant. But his appointment is yet to be confirmed. These two constitute the authoritys workforce while the PA makes the whole secretariat.

A sparingly furnished tiny room is all that the authority can boast of as its headquarters, which also doubles as the chairmans official chamber. The room has been given to it by the surface transport ministry for one good reason because otherwise the authority would not have had a postal address. It is from here that the entire show is run.

 

The authority on the other hand is required to handle a colossal job. It is to evolve a port-wise traffic structure for all the major ports.

The authority has to work out a multi-tier tariff structure involving the vessel related and cargo related tariff.

Then, it has to evaluate the proposals of different ports as regards leasing of port properties, particularly those meant to spur the private investment in the port sector. It is imperative for the authority to have technical expertise like cost and chartered accountants besides consultants, full time or part-time.

The services of two other people have been made available, but on a part-time basis. They are Rakesh Mohan, director general of the National Council of Applied Economic Research, and J B Shetty, director of the Banking Services Selection Institute, Mumbai. The paucity of space is perhaps the reason why the authority has till now met only twice. The authority was set up on January 9 with fanfare, but actually became functional from April 10, only after the government after three months of file work could finally decide on the people to man the body.

Meanwhile, proposals from port trusts on tariff revision and leasing proposals have started piling up.