By Rupang Bhatt, Bhuj, 23 February 2012

Since March 2010, as many as 350 dhow operators of Gujarat are denied permission by central Shipping ministry’s arm Marine Mercentile Department(MMD) to sail beyond Oman’s Salala port citing danger of Somalian pirates. Now the Kutchi Vahanvati Association(KVA) has raised voice against this. A delegation of KVA will be soon visiting central Shipping minister GK Vasan in Delhi in this regard.

According to an estimate, the state of Gujarat has as many as 350 dhows. While 125 of them are operated from Kutch, another 225 are operated mainly from Porbandar, Veraval and Jamnagar ports.

Dhows are smaller wooden ship that traditionally are active in sea route trade between Gujarat and Dubai, Somalia, Ethiopia and Africa.

The owners of Dhows complain that for last one year MMD has completely stopped issuing permission to sail beyond southern Oman based Salalah port citing danger of Somalian pirates.

Dhow owners say that while regular ships are allowed to sail beyond Salalah, dhow crafts are denied permission which is hurting their business on larger scale.

KVA’s Jumabhai Rama told DeshGujarat that the business of transporting goods through Dhow has been affected by 75%. Only 25% Dhows are on work while others are lying idle.

He said there are 10,000 people directly employed in Dhows.

He demanded a provision of reserve cargo for Dhows. He said, in the time of Indira Gandhi, such provision was made effective.

Jumabhai Rama informed DeshGujarat that typically, a Dhow carries load between 500 to 1500 tons weight. For sea route transfer of smaller quantity of goods, Dhow is cheaper option which gives cost benefit over regular size ship by upto 40%. Moreover Dhows can reach smaller ports, while the regular size ships can not.

He said a 500 ton Dhow costs Rs 2 crore while 1500 ton capacity Dhow would cost Rs 3.5 crore.

He further said, Kutch’s Mandvi makes Dhows for not only Gujarat and India but for other parts of the world too. Banning Dhows to venture beyond Salalah has affected Mandvi’s wooden Dhow building business too according to Jumabhai.

Gujarat Congress Secretary and shipping businesswoman Tulsi Sujan has taken a leadership of Dhow owners in this issue with centre. Tulsiben told DeshGujarat that she has already written a letter to the ministry requesting to rethink its decision.

It should be mentioned that the Director General of Shipping, Government of India had issued a circular on 30th March 2010 prohibiting Indian sailing vessels(Dhows) to trade in piracy infested areas.

The circular said, “Recent reports of Indian Mechanized sailing vessels (Dhows) missing or attacked by pirates, off the coast of Somalia have raised concern regarding the safety and security of such vessels engaged on trade in these areas”.

“The risks involved in the piracy infested areas around Somalia are well known and trading of Indian Dhows in such areas subjects the lives of Indian seafarers sailing on these vessels in danger. Further, the Directorate has received reports such hijacked Dhows may be used by the pirates for carrying out piracy attacks on merchant vessels.

“These hijacking results in great hardships, anguish and anxiety for the owner of the vessels and crew members involved and more importantly the family of such crew members.”

“Therefore to ensure the security of Indian Dhows and its crew and for security of other merchant vessels operating in the piracy infested region, all Indian registered sailing vessels are prohibited with immediate effect, to ply south or west of line joining Salalah and Male.”

“Separately the registrars of sailing vessels are being advised to incorporate aforesaid restriction for operating in the trading area, in the certificate of inspection issued under the section 421 of MS Act.”

“Any violations of these instructions by owners/tandels/managers/shippers and sailing vessels/dhows will entail penal action under appropriate provisions of the MS Act.”

Director General of Shipping in its in its another circular dated 31-3-2010 noted that, “Dhows have been one of the preferred prey of the pirates. There are several reasons for this. They are easy to seize, the ransom paid, while not as high as for other merchant vessels, is still considerable and above all a Dhows can be used as mother ship to operate further away off the coast. Also, dhows are more difficult to track than other ships because they do not have the requisite technical equipment and normally the piracy monitoring agencies do not even know that the dhow is hijacked. Many of these agencies lack the information concerning the Dhow traffic/trading along the east coast of Africa.”