Not just Singapore ship, central report blames Kerala too

The Union Ministry of Ports, Shipping and Waterways, in the report, released recently, pointed out that the crew in Singapore-based ship APL Le Havre had very little knowledge on international rules governing sea collision. “The Second Officer was found deficient in his handling of the large container ship and lacked knowledge and understanding about the requirements of Convention on the International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea (COLREGs),” the report stated.

When APL Le Harve was on its way to Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust, Mumbai, from Singapore, the ship collided with a Kerala-based fishing boat named Rabah in the Arabian sea. 42 nautical miles off the coast of Mangalore on April 13, last year. Out of the 14 fishermen, only two were found alive and out of the remaining 12, six bodies were found and six went missing. Out of the two fishermen found alive, one was from Ramanathapuram district and another was from West Bengal.

P Justin Antony, Founder President, International Fishermen Development Trust (INFIDET), based in Kanniyakumari, wrote a letter to the Centre urging an investigation of the incident. “The fishing boat belongs to one Jaffer from Veppur near Kozhikode and among the 14 fishermen majority were from Tamil Nadu and few from West Bengal. Even the boat owner did not have the complete details of the 14 fishermen,” Justin Antony told DT Next.

Meanwhile, the report also blamed the Kerala fisheries department for the incident. The fishing boat did not have the Automatic Identification System (AIS), which was mandated by the Directorate General of Fishing. Moreover, the Kerala fishing department did not take care in issuing proper ID cards to fishermen and directed them to issue digitally encoded ID cards that cannot be tampered with.