Houthi assertion that the port of Hodeidah is not ready to receive all types of ships
English - Saturday 04 March 2023 الساعة 06:04 pm
Hodeidah, NewsYemen, exclusive:
Statements by the Houthi group revealed that the port of Hodeidah, which is under its control, is not ready to receive all types of ships, despite its continuous attempts to transfer the ships' route to the port instead of the ports in the liberated areas.
In early February, the Houthi leader, Zaid Al-Washli, who was appointed by the group as vice-president of the Red Sea Ports Corporation, claimed during his visit to the container terminal in the port of Hodeidah that the port was technically and operationally ready to receive container ships and all commercial ships, according to international standards and in force in international ports.
In mid-February, the Minister of Transport in the Houthi government, Abd al-Wahhab Yahya al-Durra, announced, in a meeting with the leadership of the Red Sea Ports Corporation, the readiness of the port of Hodeidah to receive all types of container ships, including the port of Salif, according to what was reported by the group's "Saba" agency.
However, the Houthi minister returned and refuted all these allegations, after he revealed, in a statement reported by the agency in a meeting he held with the corporation last Tuesday, that the port was not technically ready to receive container ships.
According to the news published by the Houthi agency, Al-Durra discussed at the meeting "the difficulties facing stevedoring workers and ways to address them," praising "the workers' efforts to unload container ships despite the absence of bridge cranes and the work being limited to ship cranes."
The confession made by the Houthi minister coincides with the accusations that his group has been repeating over the past years, of the Arab coalition destroying the equipment and machinery of the port of Hodeidah, putting it out of readiness and preventing its repair process, the last of which was in December of last year.
The Houthi agency, Saba, reported a warning issued by the leader, Muhammad Ishaq, who was appointed by it as head of the Red Sea Ports Corporation, to stop the activity of the port of Hodeidah, accusing the coalition of preventing the import and entry of spare parts for the port's operational equipment and machinery.
At the time, the Houthi leader added that the port of Hodeidah needed new mechanisms to cover the deficit, including cranes and bridge cranes for the container terminal, which he claimed were destroyed by the coalition warplanes, warning that the port's activity would stop completely.
These allegations were contained in a previous report issued by the Houthi-controlled institution in November of last year about what it says is the damage suffered by the port as a result of the coalition raids, in which it referred to the complete destruction of the giant bridge cranes that unload containers from ships. In addition to the destruction of between 30-100% of the rest of the equipment and sections inside the port.
The Houthi admission that the port of Hodeidah is not ready to receive all types of ships exposes the scheme that the group has been working on during the past weeks, and its attempt to promote the existence of secret understandings with the coalition to lift restrictions on the port of Hodeidah.
It also exposes the Houthi allegations that companies and merchants intend to transfer the import process from the liberated ports to the ports under its control in Hodeidah, due to lower costs, while the truth indicates that the lack of readiness of the port of Hodeidah compared to the port of Aden will raise these costs, and add difficulties and obstacles in front of them.
