The ministry had a meeting with the five national port federations in Mumbai on Friday.

Manohar Bellani, a senior labour trustee of the KPT and member of the BWRC, told Newsline over phone from Mumbai: “The BWRC had taken two decisions in their meetings in Feburary and March. But in today's meeting, when the labour federations raised the issue of implementation, BWRC chairman Radha Jadhav said it (decision) lays with the Union shipping ministry.”

“We had no other way except to hold a joint meeting of all the federations in the evening to decide on a nationwide strike from July 16 after serving advance notices to the chairmen of the major ports on July 1,” he added.

The BWRC had decided in March that after finalisation of the wage revision of the 65,000 port and dockworkers at the 11 major ports in the country, they would be paid an interim relief of 13.5 per cent from January 1, 2007.