CALCUTTA, July 19: Negotiations are on and proposals have been piling up but the cargo vessel that sank in the river Hoogly on the 19th of last month continues to slide deeper into the soft silt bed, with few chances of it being retrieved in the immediate future.No concrete measures, either by the the Korean company that owns the ship (M/s Dooyang Lines Limited) or the Surface Transport Ministry, have been taken to speed up salvage operations to clear the none-too-wide channel. Last month when an angry chairman of the Calcutta Port Trust told reporters that the ``owners might not be interested in lifting the ship because every portion of the ship might be insured'', he was only echoing the CPT's helplessness regarding the issue.Incidentally, Bazbaz in South 24-Paraganas, where the MV Opal Green, a Panama flag ship with 700 tonnes of finished steel, sank after it crashed against a lash barge, is a 1000-ft channel. With a 250-feet ship within the water, its navigable space is reduced by 300-feet, making it difficult for CPT to maintain normal movement of ships.But for now, there's not much CPT can do, a port official said. According to the Indian Major Port Act, it is clearly the responsibility of the vessel's owner to lift any ship which meets with such an accident. Thus, CPT must wait till the Korean company undertakes the lifting operation or ``officially declares its inability to undertake the operation enabling the port to take a quick decision.''In the initial stages of the negotiations, the company had agreed to undertake the lifting operation but had included a ``tricky clause'' which said the company would do it only ``if the operation was technically feasible'', disclosed a CPT official. This clause gave rise to the possibility of the company abandoning the operation halfway, which would have left the CPT in a quandary, the official said.However, after almost a month, the company agreed to depute its London-based company, B&I Club, which finalised a proposal for lifting the vessel. The process to indemnify CPT is on. The proposal also included an undertaking to reimburse the cost of operation to the CPT in case the lifting was abandoned for any technical reason. According to CPT sources, the proposal had been sent to the Union Surface Transport Ministry for clearance.
