A container ship with an eight-metre draught, the first of its size, has docked at Mongla port.
The 186-metre long MCC Tokyo arrived from China's Shanghai. It moored at jetty No 5 of the port with 289 containers, carrying goods weighing 7,241 metric ton, at 2:15pm on Monday, the Mongla Port Authority said.
The unloading of the consignment from the ship started at 3:30pm.
Mongla Port Authority Acting Chairman and Member (Harbor and Marine) Commodore Mohammad Abdul Wadud Tarafdar said: "If this trial run is successful, then it will be big relief for us. In future, ships with a depth of more than 8 meters will be able to enter this jetty. Besides, to increase the navigability of the jetty, the navigability of the jetty is being continued by dredging the area adjacent to the jetty with the port's own dredgers Imam Shafi and Imam Bokhari.
Sources at the port said that ships with a depth of seven or seven and a half meters could not be accommodated at the port jetty due to the low navigability of the river. For that reason, some goods were unloaded in the middle of the river and then docked at the jetty.
However, since this crisis did not go away for a long time, traders continued to suffer financially. At one point, they demanded to increase the depth by dredging the area adjacent to the jetty to remove the navigable crisis.
"The ship will leave the port after reloading goods. It was a trial run showing that ships with 8-metre draughts can also anchor at the port," Syed Zahid Hossain, local shipping agent of MCC Tokyo and managing director of Sun Trade, said.
The ship will leave the port for China Wednesday after reloading goods.
"MV Tokyo was the first ship of its size to anchor at Mongla port. It has been possible due to dredging. Previously all the ships that anchored at the jetties did not have a draught of more than seven metres," Zahid said.
