After 56 days in sea, Captain Ali docks in city

Published Date: 3-july-2009

G Saravanan

Chennai, July 2 AFTER weeks of dilly-dallying, Indian authorities on Thursday gave permission to allow ship MV Captain Ali, which was on a mercy mission to Vanni, to dock at the Chennai Port and unload relief materials sent for internally displaced Sri Lankan Tamils from Europe almost two months ago.

According to sources from the mercy mission’s headquarters in the United Kingdom, the ship was permitted to enter Chennai Port around 5 pm and it docked in by 7.30 pm following clearance from the Centre after the shipping agents submitting the necessary papers. Agni Subramaniam, executive director of Manitham, who does the coordination for the ship in the city, said: “There were hectic activities in the national capital for the last many days to get the government’s nod and finally on Thursday evening, the government allowed the ship to enter Chennai Port.”

The ship with loads of relief materials gathered from Europe, set sail on May 7 from Port of Fos-Sur-Mer in France on the second leg of the “Mercy Mission to Vanni”. Captain Ali is carrying around 884 metric tons of food, medicines, and other essential humanitarian relief items for the 330,000 Tamil civilians in the Vanni area of Northern Sri Lanka displaced by the war.

Soon after berthing at the Chennai Port, ship captain Mohamed Mustafa told reporters: “We are disappointed with the denial of the opportunity to unload relief materials meant for internally displaced Tamils in Colombo.” Krishnamurthy, the local shipping agent for the ship, said relief materials would be unloaded and stored at a warehouse within the port in a day or two. Once the materials were unloaded, they would be stuffed in containers and sent to Sri Lanka, he added. Soon after unloading, the ship is expected to leave for Kolkata.