New Delhi: Union Ministry of Defence on Tuesday signed a contract with Goa Shipyard Ltd (GSL) for the construction of two Pollution Control Vessels (PCVs) for the Indian Coast Guard (ICG) at a cost of about Rs 583 crore. These Special Role ships will be indigenously designed, developed and built by GSL. The acquisition comes under the highest priority category for defence capital procurements.
The acquisition will significantly augment the capability of ICG to respond to oil spill disasters at sea and also enhance Pollution Response (PR) efficiency. These two vessels are scheduled for delivery by November 2024 and May 2025 respectively.
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At present, ICG has three PCVs in its fleet at Mumbai, Visakhapatnam and Porbander to carry out dedicated pollution surveillance, oil spill monitoring and response operations in the Indian exclusive economic zone (EEZ) and around islands. The new PCVs planned are for pollution response requirements in the Eastern and the ecologically sensitive Andaman and Nicobar regions. The vessels, with the capability of operating wa helicopter onboard, will have many advanced features with modern equipment of niche technology for containing, recovering and dispersing marine oil spill.
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While meeting the objectives of the Aatmanirbhar Bharat campaign, the contract would further boost the indigenous shipbuilding capability and increase employment opportunities in the shipbuilding sector that involves around 200 MSME vendors.
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