The Ministry of Defense (MoD) has re-opened the tender for the procurement of the service of retrieving the sunken landing ship - minelayer DBM - 241 from the sea along the northwest coast of the Luštica peninsula.
The tender has an estimated value of 363.000 euros including VAT. In the propositions of this public tender, it is stated that "only a business entity that has experience in quality and successful execution of at least one same or similar work in the field of the procurement subject can participate in it".
"The same works include the extraction of sunken vessels from the water, weighing a minimum of 70 tons, by the method by which the bidder will perform the service in question and which he stated in his offer, while similar operations include the extraction of cargo from the water, weighing a minimum of 70 tons, by any method", it is written in propositions.
The interested bidder will have to prepare a technical study on how and with which technique and equipment he intends to raise a ship weighing about 600 tons, which is lying on its right side at the bottom of the sea, to the surface from the shallows.
"The deadline for the preparation of technical documentation - eleborata cannot be longer than 30 days from the date of conclusion of the contract. The client will give his consent/comments on the work within 15 days from the day of delivery. The deadline for retrieving the sunken ship cannot be shorter than 30 and not longer than 120 days from the date of approval by the ordering party to the submitted report," the tender documentation states.
Sliced or whole
The Ministry of Defense gives the interested bidder the opportunity to pull the ship cut in sections to the shore of the nearby military facility Pristan, or, if he manages to raise it as a whole from the bottom of the sea, tow it to the shore and then cut it into scrap metal here.
"The recovery service entails the recovery of a sunken ship from the location of Rakita to the pier of the military part of the Pristan facility, which is approximately 1.000 meters away from the current location, with the possibility that the recovery site can also be the coast (running aground on the same) on the military part of the Pristan facility, next to the harbor crane LDI-18 if the ship is towed as a whole. The service implies that all its elements, which might fall off or break in the process of pulling out the ship, are picked up and also moved to the location of the pier of the military part of Pristan", the tender reads.
The sunken ship, by the way, lies at the bottom of the sea at a depth of 10 to 15 meters, at a distance of about ten meters from the shore, with its left side above the surface of the sea.
The last tender for the "procurement of the service of retrieving the sunken ship DBM - 241" announced by the Ministry of Defense, ended unsuccessfully at the beginning of November, because by then no offers from companies possibly interested in the job had arrived.
At the time, the MoD told "Vijesta" that after the failure of this tender, "they will perform an analysis of the technical specifications of the public procurement in question, collect additional information and repeat the procedure." That happened, but the estimated value of this public procurement of 363.000 euros including VAT remained the same as in the last, failed attempt to find a company that would perform this technically and ecologically not simple operation within the framework of such an available budget. In Montenegro, there is not a single company that deals with salvage services for sunken ships, nor have there been any attempts in our waters in the last few decades to recover a whole number of sunken ships of the size and weight of the DBM - 241.
The landing ship - minesweeper DBM - 241 was withdrawn from operational use by the Croatian Navy about fifteen years ago, after which the Ministry of Defense tried unsuccessfully on several occasions to sell this then still quite modern but very neglected warship. DBM - 241, which was on a dead line near the former Rakite military facility, on the northwestern coast of the Luštica peninsula, on February 7 last year, at around 10 a.m. during a major storm, overturned on its right side and sank. Then the old military water tanker PV - 17 was wrecked and also scrapped, whose hull was also awash, so this ship also rested on the seabed in the shallows where it was tied up with its bow part. By the way, we are talking about two military ships that have been out of operational use in the Croatian Navy for years, and which the MoD did not sell or cut into scrap metal for all that time, but for years spent the material and personnel resources of the Croatian Navy for their preservation.
Landing ship - minesweeper DBM - 241, built in 1988 in Split, was one of the youngest and most modern ships of the former JRM, and Montenegro certainly had no need for a vessel of such purpose and characteristics since 2006, when it restored its independence and took full control over By the Navy.
Laconic attitude
Left uncared for, this ship suffered great stress during a storm on February 7, 2023, under which the corrosion-eaten hull sheets gave way, so the ship began to receive the sea and slowly sink, so that when it "dive" deep enough for the sea to try to its interior through a large bow and stern ramp for loading vehicles and tanks, DBM - 241 in the morning tilted, overturned on starboard side and sank in relatively shallow water along the coast.
From the Ministry of Defense, which he then managed as acting minister Filip Adzic (URA), "Vijesti" was told immediately after the sinking of this ship that because of this, no one in the Navy and the VCG chain of command will bear any responsibility, even though the state suffered great damage due to this incident, which the Ministry of Defense did not even classify or investigate as a so-called. extraordinary event. Namely, at the moment when it sank, DBM - 241, as explained by the Ministry of Defense, "was not registered in the Fleet List, and therefore was not under the financial responsibility of the Navy." The Ministry of Defense therefore concluded that there was no so-called an extraordinary event that should be investigated by a special commission, as is usually done in the army when it comes to incidents in which major material damage is caused to weapons, equipment or military facilities, i.e. injury or death of a member of the army.
The Ministry of Defense took such a laconic attitude towards the sinking of DBM - 241 despite the fact that the state suffered serious damage in this incident, because before it sank, that ship was sold to the company "Intertrade", which had previously paid an advance and was supposed to scrap the war turn the ship into secondary raw material. Now, however, the taxpayers of Montenegro will have to pay for the not cheap and complicated technical operation to remove the DBM - 241 wreckage from the shallows on Luštica, for which it is not yet known how and when it will be carried out.
They will cut the wreck under water
According to the claims of a well-informed source "Vijesti" from the Navy of Croatia, it is unlikely that a ship of the size and weight of the DBM - 241 will simply be raised, straightened and removed from the place where it sank, primarily due to the extremely poor condition of the sheets on its bed, which will be very difficult to patch temporarily so that the ship could be raised and that by pumping out the water from the interior and ensuring the watertightness of the hull, its buoyancy could be restored.
Therefore, probably, the DBM - 241 wreck will have to be cut into smaller pieces on the spot under water and thus gradually removed from this place with a crane and taken for further cutting into scrap metal.
This will make this operation even more expensive and make it environmentally very challenging, because in the wreckage of the sunken ship there are still remains of fuel, lubricants, asbestos and other harmful substances that will inevitably, when it is cut under water, spread into the surrounding water area.
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