The dust is yet to settle on the explosion that claimed three lives at the Vijai Marine Services, a private shipyard located at Rassaim, Loutolim.
Some say, it was an explosion going by the loud bang that was very audibly heard through the village while according to some initial assessments, and going by the burn injuries that the casualties suffered from, it was a fire that was the real cause of the mishap.
But irrespective of what the cause was, which will ultimately be determined by the outcome of the inquiry that is currently underway, questions need to be asked about the working conditions, the seeming lack of safety protocol and the use of unskilled labour for demanding and taxing jobs.
Vijai Marine Services, is no small time shipyard. They are a significant recipient of government contracts and have built the two RoRo ferries that currently operate between Ribandar and Chorao. They've also built other craft including regular ferries for the state’s River Navigation Department.
What stands out is how ad hoc and haphazard the response to the incident was. For a company that is supposed to have safety and standard operating procedures in place for times such as these, it does appear the shipyard officials did not react in an organised pre-drilled manner to the incident.
But more than that, it appears there was no monitoring of the situation where the work was being undertaken -- whether workers were being made to work under higher than usual temperatures thereby increasing the risk of a fire, whether they were given adequate safety equipment, whether they were adequately trained for the job that they were given to do or were they just picked up from the road and asked to execute the day’s task?
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the company in question has not issued any public statement yet -- either expressing regret for the incident that took place, condoling the loss of lives or promising to conduct an internal inquiry into what led to the mishap. An example of how little they care to even presumably show that they are sorry for what happened and commit to improving after the incident.
The arrest of the public safety officer and the sealing of the premises by the district administration, will do little to increase public confidence in a company who have shown zero sense of accountability in the aftermath of the incident.
The government too needs to own up to a share of the blame -- for failing on both in its role as a regulator that needs to conduct regular inspections to ensure heavy industries such as shipbuilding adhere to the minimum required working conditions as well as safety procedures and protocols, and also in its role as a client in ensuring that its contracts go only to those industries who have a sense of responsibility about them, the way they work and operate and the safety equipment the provide to their workers.
But given the way things are, it is quite likely that the company’s proximity to the government is precisely the reason why there has been little oversight. The government itself seemed to give the company a clean chit by handing it contracts for building its vessels.
Heads must roll and not just at the company where the mishap took place. A sense of accountability will emerge only when those responsible will be made to understand that lives need to be valued and not considered disposable just because labour is cheap.
