Six years completed on September 9 last to the sinking of Singapore -based cargo ship MV Black Rose’s capsize in Bay of Bengal off Paradip coast. The incident took place near the Paradip Port on September 9, 2009.
But neither has the sunken ship MV Black Rose yet been dismantled, nor the authority has shown any interest to remove the wreckage of the ship. The capsized ship is lying submerged in the sea while scrap mafias have allegedly been looting the wreckage of ship after cutting its several portions. The environmentalists have cried foul against the pollution the ship has been creating in the sea.
The Paradip Port Trust (PPT) authorities have been avoiding their duty saying that the remaining part of the ship would not pose any problem for passing of other ships, trawlers and floating crafts.
Notably, the 32-year- old MV Black Rose, measuring 187.7 meter length sank off while carrying 23,847 metric tonnes of iron ore at a position about 6 km from the breakwater of Paradip Port after a technical snag occurred in the ship. While the ship sank, as many as 27 crew members were in the ship on the fateful evening. But later, the Paradip port authority with the help of Marine police and Coast Guard managed to rescue 26 crew members, including 17 Bangladeshis, three Russians and six Ukrainian out of 27 from the sunken ship and failed to trace out the whereabouts of one Oleksander Ilyushchenko, the Chief Engineer(Ukrainian National) of the ship. later, the Coast Guard managed to trace out the dead body of the Chief Engineer from the ship after a week.
On last November 2010, adjudging a PIl ,the High Court directed the then District Magistrate –cum-Collector of Jagatsinghpur to take possession of MV Black Rose as the “receiver of wreck” and proceed with salvage operation of the wreckage. The petitioner had stated in the PIl that the incident posed a grave and impending danger to an extensive part of the marine and coastal environment off the seaboard of Odisha due to oil spill and a serious threat to Gahirmatha marine sanctuary and Bhitarkanika national park. The 187.73 metre- long wreckage within 4 nautical miles of the coastline has been acting as an artificial obstruction or a breakwater. It is an unwanted buffer to natural sea waves and flow patterns of water current which could disrupt their long shore sediment transport rate (lSTR), leading to erosion of the sea beach.
The cost of clearing off the debris is being estimated at Rs120 crore, while scrap materials accrued from the debris would hardly fetch Rs4 crore in return. The port trust submitted a report in this regard to the Union Shipping Ministry, said port official sources.