It is now nearly one month since the oil tanker Tasman Spirit ran aground in one of the harbour channels of Karachi port and began to spill oil, slowly poisoning the marine environment and making human life uncomfortable for inhabitants in its range. In any civilised country, the government of the day would have moved heaven and earth to contain the environmental damage, salvage the oil, investigate and fix responsibility, obtain damages and compensate those adversely affected by the disaster. But not in Pakistan. In fact, the two institutions at the core of the debate, the KPT and PNSP, have not even bothered to tell us the gist of their investigations, let alone take any responsibility for the incident. And the Pakistan Navy, which is supposed to rule the waves of Karachi’s shorelines, has been strangely silent all this while. It is as though the PN has decided to stay clear of this mess instead of getting its hands soiled and risking censure. This is, to say the least, behaviour unbecoming of a national security institution – after all, when the Pakistan army gets involved in flood relief or disaster work, it jumps in and does what it can for its citizens instead of pointing the finger at errant or negligent civilian institutions and staying clear of them.
By now several questions have been raised. The vessel contracted by the PNSC is said to be at least 25 years old. Is that within acceptable seaworthy age limits? Was the vessel being navigated from the channel to the berth at high tide as required for a tanker of its size or was it brought in at the middle of the ebb tide when the chances of running aground were higher, especially if that channel hadn’t been dredged as required from time to time? Is the technical and professional staff at the KPT trained to cope with such cases or is the KPT a sinecure for Pakistan Navy personnel who have missed promotion and been shunted to cushy jobs in the civilian bureaucracy? If there weren’t a sufficient number of adequate tugs from the Pak Navy at hand to tug the tanker to safety, why wasn’t an SOS sent for help from Dubai?
There are also many issues related to the oil spill. How many metric tonnes have already spilt into the sea? How many metric tonnes have been salvaged into other tankers? How many are still in the hold of Tasman Spirit? Will these be salvaged or not? What concrete steps are being taken to make sure that the oil is neutralised? Why weren’t “floating walls” (with rope, canvas sheets, floats, bamboo sticks and weights, etc) built as soon as possible after the oil spill in order to contain it? Why did the KPT wait until August 7 – a full ten days after the ship ran aground on July 27 – to order the transfer of the oil to Pak Navy ships? If local experts were either not sufficiently trustworthy or not available, why did it take the KPT weeks to fly in the foreign experts?
A couple of high-ranking officials and one minister have been making clucking noises about the relief effort underway. But frankly speaking, it has all been rather pathetic. We imagined that General Pervez Musharraf or Mr Zafarullah Jamali might have taken the trouble to go to Karachi and lend their personal and federal shoulder to the job. But that didn’t happen, suggesting they have more important things to do with their precious time than to waste it on an unprecedented ecological disaster such as this one. How sad. Worse, piddling sums are being mentioned in connection with the damages to be sought from the owners and/or insurers of Tasman Spirit when the cost of the salvage operation to the government is going to be many times these amounts, forget about the untold loss to marine life in the area. Most surprising of all, some press accounts of what went wrong and who is responsible skirted the real issues and didn’t enlighten us about the nature and scope of the disaster. Similarly, the dismal response of PTV and Pakistan Radio is worth noting. Why weren’t their reporters on the job telling Karachiites the latest news on the operations at sea? Why weren’t they issuing news bulletins telling citizens how to cope with the situation in their areas?
There are lessons in this disaster for many people and institutions. But whether these will be learnt or not remains to be seen. Fortunately, however, some prominent people of Karachi have spoken out, and others have even got together and approached the courts to redress their grievances against the government and the state. This is a good sign, even if nothing concrete comes of it. If more citizens were at least prepared to stick their necks out and cry “murder” when their rights are trampled upon or they are victims of government negligence or incompetence, the unaccountable institutions of the state would wake up to their responsibilities and put their houses in order. That is why we cannot afford to let them off the hook this time round.