The water transport authority has reported 87 lighter ships under the Water Transport Cell (WTC), drowning in the last 13 years amongst which 47 have been recovered so far.

Lighter ships carry shipments from the mother vessel to their destinations and they operate with special permission from bay crossing despite their weak building structure.

Experts have attributed the shipwrecks to the technical glitch and advice these ships to refrain from operating in the sea route and not overloading.

“The vessels on the inland water route are not being properly built,” said former shipping ministry employee Engineer Shafiqul Islam.

“These ships are fit to operate till River Meghna and hence facing more accidents in unfavourable weather conditions,” he added.

He said that the bottoms of these lighter ships give away when they are overloaded due to their weak building structure.

The numbers of accidents of private lighter ships belonging to the industries are no less. On Aug 7, three ships belonging to Abul Khayer Group drowned at Chattogram’s Swandip and Jantabazar.

Several companies including Crown Cement, City Group, Bashundhara group have their private lighter ships but WTC does not have statistics regarding how many drowned as private ships are not under their jurisdiction.

In order to clear shipments from mother vessels at the anchorage, the WTC has 900 lighter ships under its jurisdiction, said the water cell Director Mahbub Rashid Khan.

“As many as 87 lighter ships drowned from Dec 21, 2006, to Aug 6 this year,” he said and added that most of these accidents take place at the Swandip Channel or the mouth of Karnaphuli.

He said that although most of the ships have been recovered from the sea, it’s especially difficult to salvage those that drown at the Bay of Bengal at the Hatia area.