The Ministry of Defence (MoD) on Tuesday signed a contract with Goa Shipyard Limited (GSL) for the construction of two Pollution Control Vessels (PCVs) for the Coast Guard at a cost of about ₹583 crore.
The ships, designed, developed and built by GSL, are scheduled for delivery by November 2024 and May 2025 respectively, a Ministry statement said.
“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 pollution response equipment of niche technology for containing, recovering and dispersing of marine oil spill,” the statement said.
At present, the Coast Guard has three PCVs in Mumbai, Visakhapatnam and Porbander to carry out dedicated pollution surveillance, oil spill monitoring, response operations in the Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZ) and around islands.
