To boost waterways and promote coastal shipping, Minister for Road, Transport, Highways and Shipping Nitin Gadkari said that Parliament nod will be sought in the ongoing Session for converting 101 rivers into waterways.
“A proposal to convert rivers into waterways is with the Cabinet. We have identified 101 rivers to be converted into waterways. We will seek Parliament approval in the ongoing Session,” said Gadkari, at a Press briefing on Tuesday.
“For 55 rivers, consultants have been appointed and detailed project reports (DPR) are being formulated,” he added.
The Minister said that all the projects will be done on public-private-partnership basis and we will not have any dearth of money. The Government has so far declared only five river stretches as waterways.
Five of the river-stretches, which have been declared as National Waterways, include Allahabad-Haldia on Ganga (1,620 km), Brahmaputra’s Dhubri-Sadiya (891 km), West Coast Canal Kottapuram-Kollam (205 km); Kakinada-Puducherry canals (1,078 km) and East Coast Canal integrated with Brahmani River and Mahanadi delta rivers (588 km).
Bowing down to severe pressure from the port and dock workers and unions, Gadkari said that all plans for “privatisation of ports” have been shelved and hence jobs of all port employees are secure.
Mass scale protests were beginning to brew in the port sector after the budgetary proposal was announced to corporatise major ports.
Concerned over the Government’s decision of corporatising ports, workers feared losing jobs. The unions protested saying that corporatisation would ultimately lead to privatisation of major ports and giving way to cartelisation by private players.