KARACHI, Aug 16: The Federal Minister for Communications, Ahmad Ali, claimed on Saturday that oil spill from the stranded Greek-registered ship had not affected human or marine life.
Speaking at a press briefing at the KPT headquarters, the minister said he did not agree with those that environmental disaster had taken place in the wake of the spill.
“A very negligible strip and that too used for recreational activities along the coast had been polluted,” he added, saying the affected 7.5km-long area adjacent to the Shirin Jinnah Colony and Clifton area would be cleaned soon.
The minister, however, did not give exact or even approximate figure of oil spill which took place from the date of running aground of Tasman Spirit to that of its breaking up.
According to him any calculation about oil spill in the sea or left in the tanker was not possible at this stage; but on the other hand, insiders saw the quantity of spillage ranging from 7,000 tons to 12,000 tons.
At the press conference, which was attended by KPT Chairman Vice Admiral Ahmad Hayat, besides other high officials, the minister said teams were already working for the resumption of lighterage operation of the grounded ship. “If we receive positive reports from our experts, we can start pumping out oil from Tasman Spirit to some other ship from Sunday morning, he added.
The minister said he himself was monitoring the salvage operations of the grounded oil tanker.
Fishermen, he said, were busy with their job without any hindrance and there were positive indications about the daily fish catch. Normally, the average monsoon catch tallied up to 400,000kg daily, but on Wednesday and Thursday the catch was around 41,000kg per day and on Friday, which was a national holiday, the catch was around 19000kg, he briefed the newsmen.
Mangroves in the Arabian Sea, Mr Ahmed Ali said, were also intact despite the oil spill problem. However, he regretted the overall development, and said: “While I really apologize for the situation and inconvenience to citizens, allow me to say that such incidents do take place in the history of the nations.”
DISPERSANT: To a question, he replied that the dispersant being used to minimise the impacts of oil pollution and other environmental hazards was safe and would not cause any adverse affect on marine life.
He admitted that the KPT did not possess sufficient facilities and equipments to meet any incident like grounding of heavy ships or major oil spill. He further said that no Pakistani personality held the ownership of the ship or had stake in the insurance matters related to the ship or its cargo.
Vice Admiral Ahmad Hayat said cleanliness drive had already been launched and about 300 well-equipped KPT staff had been engaged in this connection.
He said debris and sand mixed with the crude oil were being removed from Shirin Jinnah Colony and Clifton areas for safe disposal.
According to him, at the time being a temporary dumping farm was being developed somewhere in the Defence Housing Authority, where polluted waste would be further treated and later transferred and buried at another place.
