the goan I network
PANAJI
After over a fortnight of twist and turns in the State government’s response to the impending threat posed by the grounded naphtha-laden tanker off the Dona Paula coast, Chief Minister Pramod Sawant on Thursday finally passed the buck on to the Director General (Shipping) the maritime regulatory authority functioning under the aegis of the Union Shipping Ministry.
Sawant told reporters on the sidelines of his official inspection visit of the new High Court site at Porvorim that the responsibility of choosing the experts to recover the naphtha from the grounded tanker has been entrusted to DG (Shipping).
“DG (Shipping) has taken the responsibility of emptying the tanker Nu-Shi Nalini of the naphtha,” Sawant told journalists, adding that a five-member committee of which the Goa Chief Secretary Parimal Rai is a member will finalise the salvager for the job. Quotations received from two Singapore firms to carry out the job are being examined by the committee which is also in touch with the two firms, Sawant added.
Apart from Rai, the committee entrusted the task of finalising the agency to carry out the salvage operations has three officials from the DG (Shipping) and the chairman of the Mormugao Port Trust (MPT), Sawant said.
Dubiously anchored in the outer anchorage within the jurisdiction of MPT after weeks of efforts to offload its Karachi-loaded naphtha cargo was blocked by the Customs authorities and led to its abandonment by the skipper and the crew, the unmanned MT Nu-Shi Nalini drifted and got grounded a few hundred meters from the Marivel beach off Dona Paula during the stormy weather due to Cyclone Kyarr on October 26.
Sawant initially spoke tough against MPT authorities for the disaster but subsequently has relied heavily on the very same port authorities to rope in multiple agencies and anchor a salvage operation which is yet to bear any tangible success nearly a fortnight later.
Besides MPT and DG (Shipping) also in the loop for the salvage effort were the Indian Coast Guard and the Indian Navy.
In a bid to explain the delay for the operation to take off, the chief minister claimed that due to the hazardous nature of the naphtha cargo, the response is threading very cautiously to ensure there is no untoward incident.
