Even as controversies trail the recent refloating of four of the 14 ships that were earlier washed ashore by a squall in the night of February 14, this year, the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) disclosed last week that salvaging the beached ships would have been easier and probably done faster if they had valid Protection and Indemnity (P&I) covers.
Speaking for the first time since the salvage efforts raised dusts, NIMASA’s director general; Mr Temisan Omatseye explained that even though the agency commenced salvage works on the ships, it ought not to have been responsible for the actions, because under normal circumstances, it is the responsibility of P&I Clubs to ensure that the ships were refloated.
According to him, the accident in which the ships were swept ashore was an act of God, hence, the P&I insurance firms should have been the ones to bear the cost of ensuring that the ships were removed from the sand in which they were sitting. “Really, what we are doing is not our responsibility, it is the responsibility of a P&I insurance, the squall that happened was an act of God and that is covered by insurance policies; they normally pay for the salvage of such a vessel, but guess, what our vessels don’t have insurance”.
Omatseye who spoke against the backdrop of rumours making the rounds that the $1.7Million that was expended on the salvage operations was too much explained that all those who raised eyebrows needed to see the extent of work that was done by the company that handled it.
“The vessels were sitting on the beach, if we had acted immediately, we would have removed most of those vessels and we would have cleared them within that amount. Don’t look at the $1.7Million as the cost, you need to see the breakdown of the equipment that were used, a vessel sitting on the beach has been so high up on the sand, we had to dig around it to allow water to come, we had to take two tug boat on charter from Ivory Coast, each is 100 tonne weight to power on each end and pull the vessel while they were digging around the vessel inside the middle of the ocean.
He confirmed that the terms with the contractor is to charge per day and added that the salvage work was carried out for 10 days when there was high tide, but by the time the tide ended there was nothing that could be done.
He added that the money that was approved for the exercise had been exhausted by the time the tide was over, and disclosed that NIMASA has now reapplied for more money.
The NIMASA boss also gave an insight into the agreement with Indigenous Shipowners Association of Nigeria (ISAN) on how the cost of refloating the ships would be reimbursed.
“We were very careful, we got ISAN to give us an undertaking that they would pay, they have given us an undertaking, they will pay us our money” he added.
Shipping Position Weekly had confirmed earlier that contrary to speculations, the processes that led to the award of the contract to refloat four of the beached vessels actually passed through the NIMASA board before the ministry of transportation finally gave approval for $1.7Million to be released for the exercise.
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