The Fiji Ports Corporation Limited (FPCL) has issued notice to some shipping companies for the suspension of their Port User License (PUL).

FPCL chief executive officer Vajira Piyasena said FPCL could always take strict action on those companies not taking any action to remove derelict vessels that belonged to them.

“If that particular shipping company is not allowed to carry-out any operations this will cause enormous hardships to their employees,” he said.

“The issue here is that once we do that the company may go out of business and employees may lose their jobs.”

He said this was a delicate issue that FPCL needed to balance.

The Fiji Sun sent questions to Mr Piyasena on the next step it would take for shipping companies that were not positively responding to the removal order given to them to remove their wreck from Suva Harbour.

He said for some companies they had taken the case to courts.

In an earlier interview the FPCL CEO said most of the wrecks in Suva Harbour were more than 7 -8 years old and FPCL was unable to locate the owners of these derelicts.

However, he said FPCL had undertaken this massive task to remove them.

“The only drawback is the costs of removal as FPCL do not have sufficient funds allocated to remove all wrecks.”

He said FPCL was a private company and he was not sure their shareholders would agree to allocate millions of dollars for this non-commercial project.