The three ships dredging the ocean bed every day are sucking up sand from the shallow bed below through huge pipes and dumping a full load of sand 50 nautical miles north into the Bay of Bengal, but with little progress. This area is a major ‘sedimentation sink’ of the world. “The whirling hot-cold ocean currents around Sri Lanka dump sand here,” Kalyanaraman said.
The SCL website, which tracks the progress of the project, says that more and more work is being completed on the channel. Last month, about 19% of the work was marked “completed”. As of today, according to the website, about 24% of the work stands completed. Kannan could not explain how the website said work was progressing, if no work was being done on Adam’s Bridge itself. Seemingly unable to see the contradiction in his statements, he said: “We are not violating any court orders. All data on the website is absolute fact.”
Paying for delays
There are financial questions also being raised by DCI employees who allege that DCI has not been paid for its services for a year and that the project is causing it losses amounting to Rs40-50 lakh a month. People familiar with the industry say that internationally, dredgers are paid on the basis of work actually done. “It could be that since ocean currents keep dumping the sand back here, the DCI ships have not been able to make a dent in the ocean floor and so, are not getting paid,” said Sudarshan Rodriguez, an independent expert who has done a technical analysis of the project with a team of other experts.
In addition to using its own ships for the dredging work, DCI has chartered two ships, for which it pays about Rs36 lakh a day: Russian ship Professor Gurjanov from Singapore Sintras Asia Pvt. Ltd, and Sagar Hamsa from a Netherlands-based company, Van Oord India Pvt. Ltd. When contacted, Van Oord director in India M.P. Meires refused to confirm the rental prices for its ship. “We have absolutely nothing to say about the contract. It is the privilege of the client (DCI) to reveal information. Not ours,” he said.
DCI project manager at Rameshwaram S. Lakshmanan said he was not allowed to speak to the press, but as long as his salary was being paid, the matter of unpaid SCL bills was of no concern to him.
“It is something that one government agency owes another. The DCI’s bills will all be settled,” he said.
“Who told you we are not getting money? We are getting the money,” he added.
People are jumpy because everyone involved with this project has been ordered not to talk about any aspect of it, explained Kannan. “They are afraid to talk because their words might become sub judice in one of the many court cases filed against this project. The government could file a case of contempt against them. They might lose their job. It would mean the end of their careers.”
DCI’s annual report said the company has become a stakeholder in the Sethusamudram project, investing Rs14.50 crore towards its equity for the project. It is not clear if it is normal procedure for a contractor to invest in the client company’s equity, even as its bills remain unpaid.
A more troubling question, project watchers say, is that if the DCI bills are still outstanding, what has the SCL spent hundreds of crores on?