Only 60% of the terminal is operable. The Enapro has ordered the concessionaire to comply with an investment plan.

 

Part of a pier in the local port gave way last Tuesday and caused the fall of a mechanical shovel and its operator, who fortunately escaped unharmed. The event exposed the lack of maintenance of the coastal strip located between Pellegrini and 27 de Febrero. Today the port’s operating capacity is reduced by 40 percent, which ends up causing ships to prefer to operate in Buenos Aires.

This is not the first collapse suffered by the port docks, nor by the rest of the coast of Rosario. These port meters are in the hands of a concessionaire whose majority partners are a Chilean company, expert in ports, and Vicentín.

“From day one we have been asking for the infrastructure works to be carried out and we have been urging them to comply with the maintenance, which it is obvious that they did not do”, said a high source of the Ente Administrador Puerto Rosario (Enapro), the agency that granted the concession to the Terminal Puerto Rosario joint-stock company.

This company manages 1,607 meters of dock where the vessels carry out loading and unloading tasks, in front of the Paraná River. Forty percent is inoperable, that is to say that there are 643 meters that cannot be used, only due to lack of maintenance.

Enapro’s board of directors has repeatedly requested an investment plan for the entire infrastructure, but Terminal Puerto Rosario has not responded. “Works were carried out at some point, but clearly they are not enough. We are on alert”, said the state entity that controls the situation of the concessionaire and has known for some time the precarious situation of the facilities of one of the most important ports of the country and fundamental for the operation of local commerce.

Likewise, from Enapro they emphasized that the port continues to operate by authorization of the National Directorate of Ports and Waterways Control, which is also demanding the infrastructure works needed for the operation of the local docks.

The local head of the Sindicato Unidos Portuarios Argentinos (Supa), César Aybar, confirmed that the lack of maintenance in the port yesterday was added to the company’s decision to suspend all personnel. “We do not know why” he expressed in a press conference he gave this Thursday.

“The workers are suffering pressure because we know that the provincial government is demanding, to Terminal Puerto Rosario S.A. infrastructure works that should have already been done and they did not do it,” he said.

“We are not part of that conflict and we want to work in peace,” stated the unionist, who also stressed that the workers want to go ahead with their tasks at the port.

“They work with the tools they can and with the existing docks, which you can see how they are,” he stressed after telling that on Tuesday “a dock swallowed a mechanical shovel. Even so, the workers keep on working hard”, he assured.

Concession

The multipurpose terminal, located between Pellegrini and 27 de Febrero Avenues, was granted a 30-year concession in 2002.

In 2009, the Vicentín group joined the concession with a millionaire investment, and the Chilean company Ultramar did the same in December 2012, according to data from the provincial government.

In 2012 alone, it moved two million tons of cargo and the following year 3 million tons.

It covers an area of 70 hectares, with two work areas: Terminal 1 (South) and Terminal 2 (North and Center), where bulk cargo (soybean meal, fertilizers, vegetable oils, steel products and sugar, among others), general cargo (boxes, pallets and fruit) and containers are handled.

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