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DEFENCE: AMMUNITION DEPOTS
In The Dumps
Swelling arsenals, outdated facilities and violation
of safety norms endanger stocks and humans alike
By Harinder Baweja
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| NO CHILD'S PLAY: Children toying with what remains
of a shell after the Pathankot blaze |
All
it takes is A spark. The ember that stoked the fire at Pathankot's field
ammunition dump last week destroyed 427 tonnes of shells worth Rs 20 crore.
Exactly a year ago, a fire blazed through the ordnance depot at Bharatpur
in Rajasthan, obliterating 10,000 tonnes of equipment. The damage: a colossal
Rs 376 crore, which is more than what was spent on ammunition during the
Kargil war.
As always, a court of enquiry will now sift
through the debris, but the burning question is: why are ammunition dumps
bursting into flames? Shocking safety violations at most of the 24 major
ordnance depots are the main culprit. Also, while ammunition stockpiles
have multiplied manifold the storage capacity has not.
A Comptroller and Auditor-General (CAG) report on inventory management
in the Ordnance Services says that "almost the entire material inventory
is procured, stored and distributed through a multi-echelon supply chain
which is of World War II design".
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HANDLED
WITHOUT CARE
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60 per cent of the army's ammunition is stored in the
open under tarpaulin sheets in glaring violation of storage norms.
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In European countries 100 tonnes of explosive material
are stored over eight acres. In India, they are crammed into two
acres.
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Ammunition dumps do not have adequate fire-fighting equipment,
not even fire-alarm systems.
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Civilian labour not being hired to cut the grass around
ammunition dumps on the premise that there is a paucity of funds.
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Arms and ammunition are the cutting edge of battling
armies and their storage at depots and dumps is essential for war preparedness.
Ammunition, be it for small arms, mortars, artillery guns or even missiles
are positioned close to infantry and armoured formations but despite clear-cut
procedures, even basic requisites are not being adhered to. The fires
at the depots at Jabalpur (March 1988) and Pulgaon (May 1989) showed that
the storage facilities lacked even fire-fighting equipment. The Jabalpur
facility, for example, had 185 fire-trailer pumps fewer than required.
The Master-General of Ordnance (MGO) tried to get the Defence Ministry
to clear the procurement proposal for three years. After the fire, the
proposal was cleared within 10 days but by then equipment worth Rs 20
crore had been destroyed. Also, in three years, the cost of a pump had
gone up from Rs 90,000 to Rs 1.40 lakh.
In Bharatpur too, civilian fire tenders had
to be requisitioned from Jaipur, Agra and Mathura to contain the fire
that raged for 36 hours and sent splinters flying over a radius of 4 km.
If stored properly, splinters should only be flying vertically and not
horizontally, for the high mud walls around the dumps are supposed to
ensure precisely this. Instead, 60 per cent of the army's ammunition is
lying in the open, covered only by tarpaulin sheets. Says Lt-General (retd)
R.P. Aggarwal, former director-general, Ordnance Services: "You need
at least two years' defence budgets to create ideal storage facilities.
Ammunition is a living item like human beings and cannot be left in the
open."
Simple precautions like not letting grass grow
around the perimeter of a depot are frequently forgotten and the excuses
offered are shockingly inane: either there was no civilian labour to cut
the grass or there were no lawn mowers. In Bharatpur, for instance, the
grass around the dump had not been cut for nearly two years. Again, storage
norms demand that there be no habitation for at least a kilometre from
the depot's perimeter but villages and dumps co-exist.
A total ordnance overhaul is called for as the
depots store crucial spare parts apart from arms and ammunition. The CAG
report points out that "stores worth Rs 156.4 crore were lying in
the open as unwanted stores had occupied covered accommodation".
Again, a huge inventory of weapon systems spares were lying unidentified
at depots in Agra and Kirkee, even four years after their receipt. Besides,
the material stores sub-depot in Kanpur was spending Rs 1.55 crore every
year "towards pay and allowances of 307 idle tradesmen". It
appears that the recent expose on defence deals is only one aspect of
the malaise in the army. Inventory management clearly is another.
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