New Delhi: India’s defence ministry today signed a $78.43-million contract with Goa Shipyard Limited (GSL) for building two Pollution Control Vessels (PCVs) for the coast guard.

The acquisition, worth Rs 583 crore, would significantly augment the capability of the Indian Coast Guard (ICG) to respond to oil spill disasters at sea and also enhance Pollution Response (PR) efficiency. These two vessels are scheduled for delivery by Nov. 2024 and May 2025 respectively.

“These special role ships will be indigenously designed, developed and built by GSL. The acquisition is under ‘Buy Indian – Indigenously Designed Developed & Manufactured‘ (Buy Indian-IDDM), the highest priority category for defence capital procurement,” a Ministry of Defence statement said.

At present, ICG has three PCVs in its fleet at Mumbai, Visakhapatnam and Porbander to carry out dedicated Pollution Surveillance, Oil spill monitoring/Response operations in Indian Exclusive Economic Zone and around islands.

The new PCVs planned are for pollution response requirements in eastern and the ecologically sensitive Andaman and Nicobar regions. The vessels, with capability of operating helicopter onboard, will have many advanced features with modern PR equipment of niche technology for containing, recovering and dispersing of marine oil spill.

While meeting the objectives of ‘Aatmanirbhar Bharat Abhiyan‘, the contract would further boost the indigenous shipbuilding capability and increase employment opportunities in the shipbuilding sector that involves around 200 Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) vendors.

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