French Government Faces Cost Headache over "Toxic" Ship
Date: 17-Feb-06
Country: FRANCE
A trade union in the western French port of Brest said on Thursday it would cost 4 million euros ($4.74 million), four times the sum estimated by the Defence Ministry.
"Since Jan 2, it has been costing 45,000 euros a day to charter the tug Sumatra," Jean-Paul Hellequin, a representative of the CGT union for sailors in Brest.
The Defence Ministry said the tug would cost the state 15,000 euros a day to total around 1 million euros.
The bungled journey of the retired aircraft carrier Clemenceau has embarrassed the government just days before a visit to New Delhi by President Jacques Chirac.
He ordered it back to France on Wednesday after an Indian court blocked its journey to the scrapyard pending a final decision on how to dispose of the 27,000-tonne ship. The court is investigating whether the asbestos represents a health hazard to Indian scrapyard workers.
Chirac demanded a fresh audit of the amount of deadly asbestos on board, after a 30-tonne discrepancy emerged between the amount said to have been taken off the Clemenceau and the amount weighed by disposal teams.
The Clemenceau is due to return to Brest via the Cape of Good Hope, a passage expected to take about three months. It has been waiting off India's territorial waters since mid-January.
The costly decision to bring back the Clemenceau led opposition parties to attack the conservative government, which is trying to tighten its purse strings to reduce state debts.
"They have to tell us exactly how much it's going to cost," said Bruno Le Roux, spokesman for the opposition Socialist Party.
