Oil tanker disaster
Z . Rahman, Gulshan-1, Dhaka
The explosion and consequent disaster with loss of lives on board an oil tanker at Chittagong outer-anchorage was front page news for the last few days. Routine maintenance including chipping was reported in the newspapers to have been in progress during the incident. Marine casualties of this nature despite all possible care & attention cannot be eliminated, or in other words absolute safety may not be achieved due to the factors such as act of God, human error etc. Ships are always operated & looked after under rules/regulations of international conventions duly adopted/implemented by maritime laws of the countries. We therefore need to be firmly assured by the owners as well as the authorities that there was no exception to these requirements made for this particular vessel , "Banglar Shourav" .The ship was an asset of great value to BSC, a corporation with majority shares held by the state. Loss of valuable lives makes it imperative on the part of the authorities to ascertain the following things. 1.Approved equipments/instruments to determine the gas-free state of the tanks/spaces were used before commencement of the chipping-work. 2.Certificate was issued by the authorised govt. agency(Explosive Dept). 3.The vessel was duly covered by Hull /P&I insuranc in all respects. Surely this tragic incident touches the hearts of all seafarers and the people of this country with no words to console the members of the affected families. May Allah bless us all.
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