SC Monitoring Committee wants toxic ship sent back
the Supreme Court Monitoring Committee (scmc) on hazardous waste has recommended that a Danish ship reportedly carrying hazardous waste and beached at the Alang ship-breaking yard in Gujarat "be mercilessly driven out of India". The ship's very arrival at Alang violated the Supreme Court's (sc's ) ship breaking directives, it held.
Indian authorities let the controversial ship dock at Alang despite the Denmark government's warning about the hazardous waste it was carrying. Danish authorities had ordered the ship to remain in Denmark till its decontamination was complete. But the ship escaped. As such, the Denmark government requested the Indian government to send it back to Denmark. However, an inspection team of the Indian government gave a clean chit to the ship, saying it had no hazardous substances on board (see Down To Earth, 'Toxic receipt', May 31, 2005). Following this, environmental organisation Greenpeace approached the sc to have the ship sent back to Denmark.
In a letter to the Gujarat Pollution Control Board (gpcb), scmc head G Thyagrajan says: "...we take a very serious and alarming view of the ship as fait accompli , which could have far reaching and adverse implications to India's environmental care and concerns and international image." He wonders how the ship was allowed to dock in India. "Changing its name and arriving on the Indian shore illegally clearly demonstrates its intentions to cheat and deceive...If the ship is considered hazardous by Denmark, the Basel Convention requires India also to treat it as such." Proposing a thorough investigation into the matter by a central agency, he recommends: "It [the ship] should go back to its source country, get decontaminated and thereafter, and only thereafter, seek to return, observing in toto all the rules and regulations of the Basel Convention as well as the applicable rules of the Indian government." Regarding the scmc order, Gujarat Maritime Board chief executive officer H K Das says: "I haven't received any communication from the scmc or the gpcb. So, I won't like to comment."
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