Panaji, Nov 10 (IANS): The shipping ministry has assured that the privatisation of the mechanical ore handling division of the Mormugao Port Trust (MPT) in Goa would only be a "last resort", Congress MP Shantaram Naik said Thursday.

Naik, Goa's lone member in the Rajya Sabha, in a statement issued here, quoted a written assurance from Union Shipping Minister G.K. Vasan, even as workers at the MPT - the top iron ore exporting port in India - have threatened agitations against the privatisation.

"The Mormugao Port Trust is trying to find alternative source of funding to develop its Mechanical Ore Handling Plant (MOHP) by itself in the interest of the port and its employees, and that, only if it is not feasible, then the MPT will go for Public Private Partnership (PPP) model, as a last resort," Naik quoted the minister as saying.

Vasan has also said the MOHP at the MPT was commissioned in 1979 and as the equipments in the MOHP had already outlived its service life norm of 20 years, the ministry had taken up replacement of equipments in phases commencing in 2002, Naik said.

In July this year, nearly 2,500 employees of the MPT had gone on a day-long strike against what they called the "selling off" of the MOHP facility and fears that workers currently employed there would be rendered jobless.

"We will not hesitate to go on strike again if the privatisation is pushed on us by the ministry," said Lawrence Cardozo, a union leader at the MPT.

MPT authorities had argued that the ageing MOHP operations were making losses to the tune of Rs.59 crore annually.

Naik said, quoting Vasan, that the MPT was looking at various options to rehaul the MOHP facility including by collecting surplus funds from other major ports to fund the project but a concrete solution had not worked out yet.

The MPT exports the highest amount of iron ore annually in India. The port exported 54 million tonnes of iron ore in the last fiscal.