The central government has been continuously recommending ship recyclers to adopt international standards for ship recycling, but as the government itself is adopting double standards, government ships, Indian ship owner’s fleet, ships sent for scrapping to Indian ship recyclers have no rules on green ship recycling in India. Instead of reaching end buyers in India, the ships end up going to ship recyclers in rival neighboring countries.
MSTC by Central Government’s Shipping Corporation of India. Ltd. has decided to send their oil tanker vessel MT Sampurna Swarajya for demolition, and online bids have been started for the same.
The vessel in existence in 1999 has a LDT of 8360 mt. On June 21, the process for selling the ship has started online, the bid price of which has been fixed at Rs.2.07 crore. Entrepreneurs involved in Indian ship recycling have spent crores of rupees to adopt international standards. For the past one year, due to international factors, a small number of ship have been arriving in India for recycling.
The conditions laid down for the sale of a government unit’s vessel as fully self-sufficient, do not include giving priority to yards with green ship recycling facilities, and even though the vessel is an oil tanker, it is not required to be gas-free for hot work, whereas in India such Government regulations are strict when it comes to ship breaking.
The rules for Indian ship owners and central government-owned ships to be sent for scrapping do not include rules for green ship recycling, yard facilities adopting international standards, which could directly benefit ship recyclers in neighboring and rival Bangladesh, hence the government’s double standard should be rectify.
