Team Herald
VASCO: The floating dry dock owned by Western India Shipyard Limited (WISL) reported water ingress yet again due to which it slightly tilted on Sunday evening.
However, the situation continued to be the same even on Monday.
It can be recalled that in July last year, the same floating dry dock reported water ingress. However, the situation was brought under the control after water was pumped out from the dock’s wind tanks. Similarly, in October last year, the dry dock again reported water ingress and corrective measures were taken to avoid any disaster. This is third such major incident reported in the last one year.
According to the WISL workers, they noticed floating dry dock tilting on Sunday evening following which some them even boarded it. They opined that the dry dock, which has not been maintained regularly due to ongoing tussle between the WISL workers and Management, might have developed some holes and may have led to ingress of water inside the pump room and some wind tanks.
The incident created panic among the workers and they immediately intimated the company management so that corrective measures can be taken before the dry dock sinks and hits the seabed.
“The incident was reported on Sunday evening when we noticed that the floating dry dock, which lacks maintenance, started tilting. When our staff went to check the fault, they found that the main pump room of the dry dock had developed some hole and the pump room was submerged. At present, we cannot use the pump to pump out the water and we intimated the company management to take a call immediately before the dry dock sinks and hits the seabed,” said Seby Pereira, Secretary of WISL workers union,.
Pereira informed that they fear that the dry dock if gets tilted on its other side will damage the Cruise Vessel MV QING anchored in its close proximity.
“The management officials responded to our distress call and had sent some experts to the site. However, now they are waiting to procure some heavy duty water motor and by Tuesday they might start the work to pump out the water, till then the situation remain critical,” he added.When contacted, MPT Chairman I Jeyakumar said, “Yes I received information about the tilting of floating dry dock on Sunday evening and sent my officers to the site immediately to verify the same and to submit report so that precautionary measures can be taken”. However, he clarified that the dry dock has no oil in it and the vessel would not lead to any marine disaster.
