Barge tragedy: P-305 chief engineer blames captain, client

Rahman Shaikh chief engineer of the P305 barge that sank off the Mumbai coast during cyclone Tauktae alleged on Thursday that its captain did not take the cyclone warning seriously leading to the death of at least 49 crew membersHe also questioned the vessels seaworthiness P305 which housed personnel engaged in maintenance work of an offshore oil drilling platform of staterun oil and gas major ONGC sank on Monday eveningRecovering from injuries Shaikh said in a video shot by his brother Aalam that Balwinder Singh the captain insisted that wind speeds will not be very high and the cyclonic storm will last only for an hourAlso Read Oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan must resign over barge tragedy Shiv SenaThe captain said the wind will not go over 40 knots about 75 kmph It will start at 11 and end at 12 The entire incident happened because of the captain and client the 48yearold Rahman Shaikh said in the video shared by AalamBalwinder Singh is among the 26 people still missing He is said to have jumped into the waters without a life jacketP305 an accommodation barge for personnel engaged in maintenance work on Heera oil drilling platform of ONGC deanchored and drifted in cyclonic winds of over 100 kmph on Monday and hit an unmanned oil rigThe collision ripped a hole in the barge with 261 persons onboard resulting in water seeping inMany of the survivors said they jumped into the sea with life jackets on Rahman Shaikh and many others had to spend more than 24 hours in water before being rescued by the Indian NavyCiting his brother Aalam Shaikh said the crew tried to pump out the water but the hole was too bigWhen it was out of control the team went up where they found that the captain was missing Aalam Shaikh saidThey then distributed life jackets and jumped out he said adding that Rahman and a team of six people were the last to leave the bargeRahman is employed by Ocean Divers parent firm of Durmast which was appointed by Afcons InfrastructureIn a statement Afcons a Shapoorji Pallonji Group company said it had chartered the vessel from Durmast and added that chartering is not the same as subcontracting the responsibility for the marine side of the operations namely safe vessel operation navigation and vessel management comes under the scope of work of the vessel owners the Afcons statement saidIt also said that the weather deteriorated rapidly and reached levels far worse than the forecast of winds of 40 knots per hourAalam Shaikh who is in the ship management services business alleged that the barge owners had bought the vessel from a Malaysian operator as scrap and deployed it in the Arabian Sea as support vessel for oil exploration platformsHe questioned the barges fitness to withstand an impact of the kind it suffered after hitting the oil rigThe company should give compensations to family members of the deceased personnel and both the company and vessel owners should be blacklisted he demandedThis story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever