The Ghana Ports and Harbours Authority has taken delivery of two high tech Liebherr cranes intended to augment the timely delivery of container vessel services at the Port. The purchase of the cranes is also meant to supplement services at the port to meet the increasing container traffic at the port.
Director of the Port of Tema, Mr. Jacob Adorkor in an encounter with the media announced saying, “This is a new addition; we can comfortably say that, we can handle two container vessels at a time without any problem. When we had the three, we were handling one container vessel at a time, with one crane standing by. But with this one we can handle two container vessels without any challenge and it will improve the efficiency of the port, ship turnaround time will improve and vessels will not wait at anchorage for long period to come in to work”
Cost of Cranes
According to the Director of Port, each of the cranes cost as much as 5.7 million Euros and that the Authority owned two of such in Takoradi.
Necessary Investment
Questioned if this move was a necessary investment since Meridian Ports Services (MPS) rendered such services, he responded in the affirmative saying “It is very necessary for GPHA to invest in these kinds of cranes, MPS is only a container terminal operator, and with a container terminal operator, they are only licensed to handle only containers and they only have two berths, in order to avoid container vessels queuing at the anchorage it is better for GPHA to invest in these cranes so that other container vessels who do not have access to the MPS terminal can be turned to the GPHA terminal and be handled speedily”
“Apart from that, these cranes are multi-purpose cranes, and because they are multi-purpose they can handle any kind of container, heavy lift, vehicles, any project cargo, that is the advantage of these cranes over the ship to shore gantry cranes that the MPS use”
Name of Crane
“Current management of GPHA thought it wise to inculcate hard work, dedication and commitment in the staff, so it is always said that an organization that fails to recognize the efforts of its staff is not worth committing yourself to”
“So the current management thought it wise to dedicate the new equipment and facilities in the names of those dedicated staff who have passed” he expressed
The crane was named after one Ing Andrew Anti Okae who according to Mr. Adorkor managed to transform the mechanical workshop of the port to a modern workshop.
“We found it necessary to name the crane after him for his efforts in transforming the ports, he was a transformational engineer. In the past we named some of our facilities after some of our past directors”
