Amit Mitra

Mumbai, Dec. 28 The Ministry of Shipping is planning to speed up its efforts to create a Marine Emergency Fund to be used for relief operations in the aftermath of marine casualties, including loss of ships and oil spills in the Indian territorial waters.

Measures such as the early creation of the fund and putting in place an emergency response mechanism have climbed higher on the Shipping Ministry’s priority list in the wake of a sharp increase in the number of marine casualties across Indian waters in the last few years.

In response to a question tabled in the Rajya Sabha earlier this month, Mr T.R. Baalu, Minister of Shipping, Road Transport and Highways, admitted that the number of marine casualties in Indian waters has gone up.

The proposal for creation of an emergency fund emerged after a high-level committee, headed by the Directorate-General of Shipping, made a string of recommendations to reduce such incidents.

“The recommendations made by the committee include preventive and rehabilitation measures such as restrictions on old vessels and stringent inspections,” Mr Baalu said in his reply.

The Ministry is also considering a proposal to have an emergency response mechanism for responding to emergency situations, such as salvaging sunken ships and combating oil pollution. Some of the proposed measures may require suitable legislative changes.

Sources close to the development say the Marine Emergency Fund would have an initial corpus of about Rs 30 crore and will be operated by the Directorate General of Shipping. The fund will primarily be utilised to finance some part of urgent salvage coordination requirements and for taking care of victims of ship accidents.

This assumes importance as some of the ships that sank and were subsequently abandoned by their owners lay close to entrance channels of ports. This tends to pose some problems to ship movements, with the Mumbai port being one of the worst hit ports on this score.

According to industry sources, the number of ship casualties within Indian waters increased from 37 in 2005 to about 230 in 2007. Such incidents occur more frequently during monsoons — about 70 out of the 230 casualties in 2007 occurred during monsoons.

The committee made a sharp focus on the need to restrict movement of older vessels, as these vessels accounted for a bigger slice of the casualties. Ministry figures indicate that in the last three monsoons alone some 30 ships sank, out of which about 60 per cent were above 25 years old.

Sometime ago, insurance companies, including GIC, had indicated their willingness to design insurance products exclusively for Indian ports to cover costs of shipwreck disposal and oil spill clearance in the aftermath of a marine casualty.

As ports are the worst affected by shipwrecks and oil spills, these companies had suggested that ports could take insurance covers and pass on the burden to port users, such as shipping companies.

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