Article - 42 Week 51
PILOTING TO excellence:
When many of us sail on foreign companies and happen to come to Indian shores, we find our pilotage system & pilots much too appalling, compared to pilots of the developed nations. We make a mental note of this and think of changing this, if ever we ever happen to undertake this skilled profession. And many of our brethren do come down to take up this challenge in India. However, all the big dreams of making this worthy & as excellent as other nations, evaporates much too soon. The system is strong. It overpowers us. Excellence is ejected by the system & mediocrity is nurtured with great pomp. We are left with a choice to surrender ourselves to the system or get ourselves jettisoned. Many of us do get jettisoned & a few have to adapt to the slimy & tricky system to make it their profession & livelihood.
Let me first describe the pilotage as conducted in Singapore and then describe, how it is done in a typical port like Nhava Sheva.
Singapore:
The ship's agent goes to PSA's portnet online & enters the ETA of his vessel. Also he enters the numbers of all import, & transshipment containers. Then the system allocates a berth No & time of berthing which is invariably between 15 minutes to 1 hour of the ETA of the vessel. You can amend the ETA any number of times until 24 hours before the last given ETA. If you do change your ETA before the '24 hours' there would be a penalty as fixed by the system. The Port contacts the vessel & monitors ETA. The pilot goes out & waits for the vessel to come to the Pilot boarding grounds, rather than the other way round. Then he boards promptly and manoeuvres the ship to the allocated berth. At times the planning is so well done that when your incoming ship is approaching the berth, the out-going ship is just leaving. The berth practically gets into operation with no more than 15 minutes. That is a pleasure to watch. Unloading starts exactly upon berthing. All the export containers for the vessel - both transshipment as well as local exports - are entered on the portent system, with other usual details. The port planner takes the arrival condition of the vessel with distribution of ballast & bunkers etc 24 hours before arrival. And he plans the loadings with all the export bookings in line with the plans given by the planner of the shipping line. Stability, drafts, trim, & other parameters are calculated by the port's system by the planner before arrival of the ship. The shipping line can change bookings until the last minute of vessel berthing & the planner incorporates them into the plan. The haulier can take the container inside the terminal for loading on the vessel until the loading operations start. No window, no cut-off, no Form-13, and no advance list in hard copy or soft copy. 15 minutes before completion of operations, the Pilot is on board to unmoor. And before you realise, the vessel has completed her operations & piloted out to the fairway buoy. This happens in an island city with scanty land mass and they handle 10 times more traffic than our Nhava Sheva. I don't claim that they do any magic. It is just that they do it as it should be done.
Nhava Sheva:
First you contact the Terminal and book a place. You are asked to bring in the ship without guarantee of berthing. You have to be close to the Marine Department and keep taking their blessings. Filing of IGM for the vessel and cargo is a highly skilled and arduous job. I can bet that even Einstein if alive, would not get it through with six open chances. Its complexity, inflexibility, rigid sequencing, the number of desks to be passed, the ever dangling Damocles's sword if a comma or full stop goes amiss, and correct quantum & sequencing of the greasing of the proxy as well as direct palms to be greased are amazingly more than even rocket science! When I did a course on Multi Modal Transport & Logistics course conducted by the Ministry of Railways, I was at an extreme difficulty to rote this sequencing both for exports and imports, because most of them did not make logical sense. Then I realised that this procedural sequencing is deliberately designed to extract bribes & extortion on exports & imports. And some one thought it to be so important that we were supposed to mug this process to answer our questions in the examinations. Then when we see the crocodiles tears from our Ministers about the high transaction costs in our exim trade, we know what the tears are about. We need to negotiate windows and doors to bring vessels in. Invariable the vessel shall be made to wait with a lot of uncertainty before she would be allowed to berth. The terminal plans & manages the cargo operations, while the Marine Department works as a separate island. If it happens to be JNP, you need special blessings from both the Traffic & Marine Department. Not to forget other departments like planning or equipment drivers who can throw a bazooka on the spokes any time. You dare not vent your frustrations in public lest your vessel gets banished from the kingdom. The ordeal does not stop there. What if some one influential in the Board of JNP has a vessel to berth? Stories are cooked and your vessel's priority drops to the bottom with surprising ease! Even the Mumbai tides are manipulated against your priority. You are told with no uncertain vocabulary that you have to cough up enough to overcome these nuances here.
The time taken between a vessel leaving the berth and the next one berthing stretches from hours to days in the name of tide & shortage of pilotage. Operation is again an arduous & primitive process in JNP, though they are efficient in NSICT & GTI. When operations are over, time is lost waiting for pilot boarding, & clearances etc. By the time your vessel leaves, you wish you never had come here in the first place! A projection of one day could well turn around to be 7 days.
The thing of interest here is we have exceptionally brilliant guys and skilled people in the system. Resources and infrastructure are adequate. Then why is the waste so glaringly painful? Some say that the government can not run efficiently. But how are the governments in China & Singapore running their ports so efficiently? What is wrong with our government or its system? Such questions are being asked by the votaries of the impoverished Bihar. This time around all Indians shall ask such questions, when election time comes.
Brgds
Capt Rath
Econship Marine
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