COLOMBO: The Sri Lankan agent for a Singapore-registered ship has paid one million dollars in damages for causing the island’s worst marine pollution disaster.
Environmental activist Hemantha Withanage confirmed the payment represented a token amount compared to the one billion dollars in total damages awarded by the court.
The Sea Consortium made the payment in good faith despite lacking the financial capacity to cover the full compensation.
Withanage received official documentation of the 300 million rupee payment to the Treasury following a court affidavit.
The court held the local agent responsible for any non-compliance by the Singapore-based ship owners.
X-Press Feeders chief executive Shmuel Yoskovitz separately announced his company’s refusal to pay the massive damages.
Yoskovitz warned that payment would set a dangerous precedent with wide-ranging implications for global shipping.
The MV X-Press Pearl sank off Colombo Port in June 2021 after a fire burned for nearly two weeks.
Investigators believe the fire started from a nitric acid leak among the ship’s hazardous cargo.
The vessel carried 81 containers of dangerous goods including acids and lead ingots.
Hundreds of tonnes of microplastic pellets known as nurdles also contaminated Sri Lanka’s coastline.
The ship had been denied permission to offload its leaking nitric acid at ports in Qatar and India beforehand.
Microplastics from the wreck covered an 80 kilometre stretch of beach along Sri Lanka’s western coast.
Fishing bans lasted for months to contain the environmental damage from the spill.
The court had ordered an initial 250 million dollar payment by Tuesday with potential for further instalments.
Yoskovitz rejected the penalty’s open-ended nature as undermining maritime liability principles.
X-Press Feeders claims to have already spent 170 million dollars on wreck removal and compensation.
The company’s expenditure covered seabed cleaning, beach restoration and fisherman compensation.
Sri Lanka’s government will consult its chief prosecutor regarding further legal action. – AFP