Six long years after River Princess, was allowed to settle into the sea there, the Goa government has decided to do away with the ship.
The state government wants the huge vessel towed away, experts feel it is a difficult job
PANAJI: Six long years after River Princess, the vessel which broke down off the Sinquerim coast, was allowed to settle into the sea there, the Goa government has decided to do away with the ship and awarded a contract for its towing. A tall order, if experts are to be believed.
Reportedly agreeing to pay Rs5.5 crore to M/s Jaisu Shipping Company Private Limited, state deputy chief minister Wilfred de Souza made it clear while refloating the tenders that the vessel “has to be towed and will not be allowed to be cut.”
But Goa-based salvage expert Anil Madgavkar, partner of Madgavkar Salvage, said: “It is like uprooting a sunken four-storeyed building.”
He argued that the vessel has sunk nearly 8-10 metres deep in sand, and has between 30,000-40,000 tonnes of sand inside.
“There are huge gaping holes just above the waterline,” he also said. Such kind of expertise is not available in India, experts further argued.
The vessel has been an eyesore since it ran aground in June, after being anchored in the sea for six years, altering the marine ecology of the region forever. The state has seen the rise and fall of two governments since, but De Souza, unlike his predecessors involved the know-how of experts from Shipping Corporation of India and the Directorate of Shipping in New Delhi.
There are fears that an earlier salvor — Cross Chem — who was given the tender to remove the ship, but failed, might drag the government to court.
There are also fears that the owner of the ship, Anil Salgaonkar, who has allegedly resisted all earlier attempts to get salvors in, will scuttle the government’s latest attempt to give hand over the tender to M/s Jaisu Shipping Pvt Ltd.
Salgaonkar reportedly has been pushing for the vessel to be sold as scrap but this proposal has been rejected time and again on the grounds that it will cause environmental pollution.
Incidentally, Jaisu had earlier claimed that on refloating, the vessel would become its property and will be sold in any scrapyard.
But the government objected to pointing out that under the Goa Tourist Places (protection and maintenance) Act 2001, the vessel belonged to the state.
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