Mumbai pays a heavy price for burden at sea

Soon, a plethora of agencies leapt into the fray — from the Coast Guard, the Mumbai Port Trust, Director General of Shipping, the Mercantile Marine Department to the state Pollution Control Board. Now, nearly a year and reams of stories later, the situation remains exactly the same. If it’s the Brazilian-registered Tupi Buzios’ at Colaba, then it’s the Al-Hadi’ which ignominously sank right opposite the Governor’s residence at Malabar Hill last August , the Ukrainian M V Romashka’ which remains grounded before the Coast Guard headquarters off Worli, or the Zehn Don’, one of the permanent attractions in Bandra’s Carter Road. “The message we are sending out to the world seems to be: come and crash your ships here and get away scot-free,” remarks a senior merchant naval officer.

“The ships were grounded by nature’s fury. But the official attitude has not been helpful for the environment. There is no central authority to handle the issue and different agencies seem to be passing the buck,” says environmentalist Subhash Sule. Then there are the attendant problems of shipwrecks. The Al-Hadi’ is a virtual ecological time-bomb ticking in the shallow waters off Malabar Hill, with a lethal cargo of 10,000 tons of sulphur and 100 tons of fuel oil in its ageing holds. Her owners have washed their hands of the vessel. And the 9,000 tonnes of rotten wheat flour offloaded from the Romashka’ last month is slowly finding its way into the open market.

A ship is the responsibility of various agencies depending on where it runs aground. Inside Mumbai port limits it’s in the jurisdiction of the MPT. Wrecks on the southern tip of Mumbai to Mahim are under the purview of the city collector who is also the receiver of wrecks. The suburban collector is the receiver of wrecks in the area north of Mahim. “It is a new venture for us. We have never had so many shipwrecks,” says a harried senior official at the Mumbai collector’s office. He adds that the ships would be auctioned if they survive the monsoon.

The Tupi Buzios’ was purchased for Rs 2.25 crore by a scrap merchant at auction in February but she is yet to be towed away to a scrapyard. The sheriff of Mumbai had seized her for non-payment of dues last year, before she ran aground off Colaba Point in the storm. Sources in the collectorate say loopholes in the Merchant Shipping Act prevent the speedy disposal of shipwrecks. The lien — or dues on an auctioned ship to be cleared by the purchaser of the vessel — act as a discouragement. The Romashka’, for example, has dues running into several lakh.

“It’s foolish to even think anyone would buy and then spend twice the amount salvaging a wreck like the Al-Hadi’,” the sources say, adding that the government should commission a salvage firm to speedily extricate it, instead of waiting for buyers.

The wrecks also highlight the larger issue of sub-standard ships — which find a haven in third world ports after being refused permission to operate anywhere else. MPT officials reveal that a circular they issued three years ago refused entry to old and sub-standard ships into Mumbai unless cleared by port authorities. But it was put in the deep freeze by the government.

While schemes like converting the wrecks into floating hotels are yet to take off, prospective buyers are dismayed to find that two of the ships are being slowly stripped by thieves of everything of value, including metal and machinery.

“The stranded ships are ultimately destined for the scrapyard; it’s only a question of when the government wakes up,” a senior merchant naval officer observes.