The preventive measures taken by Qatar Ports Management Company (Mwani Qatar) are keeping the ports safe, while Qatari ports have displayed resilience by registering record productivity during these testing times.
To curb the spread of COVID-19 in the country, Mwani Qatar under the direction of the Ministry of Transport and Communications has implemented precautionary and preventive measures at the ports while maintaining strong growth in operations.
The Ministry of Transport and Communications said on its twitter account yesterday that it has continuous communication with the Ministry of Public Health (MoPH), General Authority of Customs and entities operating at ports.
The ports authorities are ensuring less workers at ports while securing business continuity. Seafarers are also banned from docking at the quay and seafarer change is also banned at country’s ports. Meetings are conducted via conference calls and employees work remotely.
The ports authorities are also organising awareness sessions and periodicals on health and safety measures. Among other measures, staff coming from abroad are seen by healthcare authorities as well as port facilities are being sanitized. They are also distributing face masks, sanitizers and gloves among staff and workers.
At Hamad Port, ship agents are submitting medical certificates issued by IMO. There are also continuous port security patrols and no one is being allowed to board a vessel. Mwani Qatar is also informing MoPH of last 10 ports a vessel has visited.
The Mwani Qatar, at Hamad Port, is doing around the clock monitoring of workers health status and sub-grouping them. Also, any vessel is being kept at a safe zone in case any seafarer shows any symptom. Some buildings such as cafeterias have been shut down at the port.
At Doha Port, work has been temporarily suspended until further notice except for flour mills quay. Mwani Qatar has discontinued receiving wooden ships at Ruwais Port while only reefer and livestock ships are being received there. At Ruwais Port, building access measures have also been tightened.
Regarding the performance of Qatari ports in first quarter of 2020, the graphic shows a robust traffic. Qatar’s ports received 801 vessels in the first three months of this year and 335,928 Twenty-Foot Equivalent Units (TEUs) containers.
