KARACHI, Sept 25: The People’s Party Parliamentarians on Thursday urged the government to constitute a committee, comprising reputed experts to conduct an impartial inquiry to affix the responsibility of the Tasman Spirit fiasco.

PPP’s secretary information Taj Haider on Thursday expressed serious concern over the alleged cover-up of the Tasman Spirit fiasco by the KPT authorities.

Accusing the KPT administration of having instructed its officers and staff not to talk about the grounding of the ship. He said that two KPT employees — Mazhar Khan and Abdul Waheed Qureshi — were suspended for “asking too many questions.”

The PPP information secretary asked as to why the ship was brought in at a time when the tide was receding. The pilot, he said, had boarded the ship as early as 9am, but why had the port authorities allowed six other ships to come in before letting the “Tasman spirit” inside the port channel.

Mr Haider claimed that there appeared to be no logical answer for the grounding as well as for not making an all out effort to pull the ship out.

Taj Haider pointed out that the Alaska, US, oil spill of 37,000 tonnes had polluted a shoreline measuring 1,300 miles of shoreline but why had the Karachi spill of 31,000 tonnes reached only seven-kilometre-long shoreline. The Karachi oil spill, he said, should have reached south Indian beaches while it did not even reach Port Qasim.

Dismissing the official claim that 31, 000 tonnes of oil had been released on just 7,000-metre-long stretch of the beach, he said if such a large quantity of oil had been spilled, it would have soaked every metre of the beach with over four tonnes of oil, adding that a few hundred tonnes of crude oil would be enough to do the damage that had been done to the Clifton beach.

Terming the attempts to refloat the grounded ship with just a single tug intriguing, Mr Haider wondered where the other tugs were at that time and why repeated attempts were not made at high tide level specially on July 29 and July 30, when there were higher than average tides because of favourable lunar position.

Criticizing port authorities for not consulting “very senior and world-renowned master mariners like Capt M. J. Sayeed, Capt Abdul Karim, Capt Ahsan Jafri, who were available in Karachi at the time.

Cautioning about the danger of the broken pieces of the ship sliding down and blocking the channel entrance, he called for reinstatement of the suspended staff.

Meanwhile, a statement issued by the PPP criticized president of the Sindh National Front Mumtaz Ali Bhutto for issuing statements against Asif Ali Zardari, blaming him for making compromises as the caretaker chief minister of the province over Sindh’s water share, PPI news agency reported.

The statement, issued by the party’s media cell, a PPP spokesman accused Mumtaz Ali Bhutto of having collaborated with the then President Farooq Ahmad Khan Leghari to deprive the people of Sindh of their constitutional and legal rights.

Terming the SNF chief’s statement part of a “vicious campaign” against Asif Ali Zardari to “undermine his image,” the statement said that the attempt which would fail to achieve the desired results.

Blaming Mumtaz Ali Bhutto of trying to appease the government, the PPP spokesman said that such statements were issued in a bid to gain the government’s favour, enabling him to be appointed as the caretaker chief minister of the province.