About 150 port workers are starving and in debt,” say Porto de Porto Alegre operators

Around 150 workers from the port operating companies at the Porto de Porto Alegre, which has not operated since October 2024, are “starving and in debt,” according to the manager of one of the companies, who wished to remain anonymous. According to her, who claims to be familiar with the relationships with Portos RS, the state-run company responsible for managing the port and port activities in Rio Grande do Sul, the cause is the bureaucracy surrounding dredging in most channels necessary for navigation in the capital.

She further criticizes the supposed greater attention given to Rio Grande at the expense of Porto Alegre. “We are at risk of having to lay people off. We’ve been demanding dredging for over ten years, and the priority has always been Rio Grande, even during the times of SPH and Deprec,” she said, referring to the previous port authorities.

“When the floods came in May 2024, our company was underwater for a month and then another two months without work because the port had no power. There was no way to operate. Numerous meetings were held with the authorities, warning them that dredging must have happened yesterday. The amount of sediment that entered the Guaíba showed that the situation is a thousand times worse than before. It wasn’t for lack of warning,” she continued.

At the end of October last year, ships carrying cargo ran aground one after another in the Itapuã channel, in Viamão, between the Guaíba and Lagoa dos Patos, due to the sediment accumulation brought by the historic floods a few months earlier. This led the state government to release R$731 million from the Rio Grande Fund (Funrigs) for Portos RS to conduct the bathymetry and dredging of 320 kilometers of inland waterways.

The problem, she reports, is not the money itself, since the state-owned company has nearly completed dredging in Itapuã, but bureaucratic issues that prevent the same from being done in other essential channels, particularly São Gonçalo in Pelotas, Pedras Brancas, and Leitão in the Metropolitan Region. The head of pilotage at Lagoa dos Patos, Geraldo Almeida, compares the situation to the collapse of successive barriers that completely block a road. “The tractor arrived at the first barrier and cleared it. But there are still three or four left. It’s the same thing,” he says.

A tender is underway to resolve these dredging issues, with five companies interested. The first two have already been disqualified due to document problems, and the third, actually a consortium, may not have a dredger capable of removing 80,000 cubic meters of sediment per month from the channels, as required. Even if the winner starts operating according to the deadlines in the documentation, the head of pilotage estimates that work will only begin at the end of February, and the port will be operational for larger ships a month later. As for the documentation authorizing operations with a depth of 6.50 meters, the ideal for the port, it is expected to be issued between April and May, with vessels starting to arrive between June and July.

“The shipowners have already warned that they won’t come to Porto Alegre until the port reaches 6.50 meters and an official document is issued to confirm that. We’ll lose over six months.” That’s why Almeida agrees that the pressure from port operators is very high.”It’s an issue that also matters to businesspeople,” he says. Due to the ship crisis, shipowners either need to unload cargo at the Imbituba port in Santa Catarina and bring it overland to Rio Grande do Sul or bring partial loads from the Rio Grande to avoid further groundings. Either option increases costs, Almeida comments, adding that ship owners are becoming increasingly unwilling to take the risks.

What Portos RS says

João Alberto Gonçalves Júnior, the Director of Management, Administration, and Finance at Portos RS, stated that the delay is not due to mismanagement but in compliance with the bidding law, including defined appeal deadlines and that if there are disputes between companies, those are internal matters. He also denied that there had been no dialogue with the port operators. “We’re doing everything we can, but I think it’s possible to open a communication channel so that we can talk more directly. We meet every two weeks but may not know what’s happening ‘on the ground’ with the workers. Our responsibility is with infrastructure, so I’m not sure how we could help these operators in a more technical way. But it’s important to hear their concerns,” said João, adding that the issue would be discussed in the meeting last Wednesday.

When asked about the extended timeline for opening the channels, the director explained that the opening occurs gradually as the dredgers complete part of the work. If all requirements are met in early February, not late February, work will begin on the remaining channels, the director said. “For sure, it won’t take six months to release navigation. We do constant evaluations and will release the passage of ships with 20, 50 more centimeters,” he assessed.

Regarding the dredging of the Itapuã channel, where interior navigation is already open for ships with a draft of up to 5.18 meters, João said that state resources were used urgently. Still, for the other channels mentioned, as they are larger projects, there is a process of “smart contracting,” offering more competitiveness in the market to make the supplier hiring more efficient. He also mentioned that Portos RS has no control over who will apply for the tender. He further denied knowledge of documentation issues with the third-place company and the first two.

Source: Correio do Povo

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