Toxic ship may seek berth at Alang

She wants a final resting place. But after everybody turned her back — as her death could bring devastation to several others — the destination of the Gulf Josh may now be Alang in Gujarat. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Jun 1, 2011, 02:28:22 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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She wants a final resting place. But after everybody turned her back — as her death could bring devastation to several others — the destination of the Gulf Josh may now be Alang in Gujarat.

The ship, originally known as the Probe Koala and owned by London-based Refigure, was used to refine low-grade naphtha with caustic soda on the Mediterranean Sea as the technology cannot be used on land anywhere in the world because of environmental hazards.

The Gulf Josh is believed to be carrying toxic chemicals, including mercaptans — a group of sulphur-containing substances — that attack the respiratory system and hydrogen that affects the central nervous system.

The ship has been on the move since 2007 from Ivory Coast to the United States to West Asia to Vietnam in a bid to find a place to dump its waste and get dismantled.

The US-based Global Marketing Systems, which is at present operating the ship, specialises in ship-breaking. But the owner of the company, Anil Sharma, did not respond to calls from Hindustan Times nor did his company respond to an email questionnaire.

Now, the Gulf Jash may be on her way from Vietnam to the Alang ship-breaking yard after Bangladesh refused her entry last week. Chittagong in Bangladesh and Alang in Gujarat are the world’s two biggest sites for dismantling ships.

“We have directed the ship-breakers’ association, the port authorities and the Coast Guard not to allow the Gulf Jash into Bangladeshi territorial waters,” government official Zafar Alam told the media.

Rizwana Hasan, director of Bangladesh Environment Lawyers Association told HT: “After Chittagong, the only place where such a ship can be dismantled is Alang.”

But the Indian government is still clueless. “We have no information about the ship,” said environment minister Jairam Ramesh.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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