whistleblower
Here's a classic story of how a company with a bright and promising future was scuttled by mismanagement and daylight robbery by its senior employees, and now slowly sinking to the bottom of the sea. It used to be a tight run ship, maneuvered by the dedicated Vijay Seth. However soon after the buy-out by BSL, it turned into a free-for-all.
The spell seems to have taken hold as soon as the keel of the ill-fated jack-up rig (V351, being built in BSL yard at Dabhol) was laid. After 4 years of mismanagement, cost overruns (BSL built and broke the helipad 3 times before they finally got it right) and plain bad planning, the rig is still barely 60 percent complete. The launching of the vessel has been postponed over 5 times already.
(To cover the gross ineptitude of Bharati Shipyard would require a 600 page book, so I will leave that out for now; only fact worth mentioning being that the Dabhol yard has not produced a single vessel in the 7 years of its existence! Not even a fishing boat. Every order has been cancelled due to the inability of the yard to deliver).
Coming back to GOL, to understand the level of corruption and incompetency of its top brass, a few examples are worth mentioning:
1) The company went shopping for a new jack-up rig. The head of the drilling dept. was sent on a trip to Jabelali Sharjah, where he spotted an old, out of action jack-up; the ENSCO-50. After taking a precise 25 minute tour of the rig he advised the "powers that be" that the rig was in shape and worth the price. Only after they bought the rig, and the crew came on board,did they realized the rig was grossly inadequate for the high standards required by operators the world over, including our desi ONGC. The rig had only 3 mud-pits and 2 Mud pumps, due to which it was written off by ONGC, and had no hopes of securing a contract anywhere else in the world. The rig sat on the periphery of Lamprell docks for over a year. Fortunately, maybe due to a miracle (or the sincere prayers of its CEO, the straight, erstwhile and old-school sailor Soli E.) GOL found a buyer in a bunch of Iranians (who bought the rig only because they were more inept & corrupt than the people they were buying from). GOL made a quick buck and a quicker exit much to the relief of the management.
2) Every shareholder should take a trip to the accommodation barge “Gal Installer”. The barge has not been able to secure a contract for almost a year now. It is however the most heavily outfitted barge you can find in the world! It has 2 hydrophore units on every level. Usually ONE unit is more than enough to sustain the entire barge. This barge has SEVERAL. Same story with the cooling water pumps. It seems someone went out of the way to order 6 equipments wherever ONE was required. Why? The procurement calls were unilaterally made by a Mr. Mur***, who (in the opulent corridors of Energy House) has quite a reputation for skimming the fat off the top of the milk bucket.
Millions of dollars worth of excess equipments and spares are ordered, where none are required, and yet the critical criteria required for the vessels to clinch contracts are always falling short. So how come the same people keep getting picked to handle every dry dock repair for every single vessel? These are questions which should have been asked in the shareholders’ meetings a long time ago.
As the share prices dip to a new low week after week, this ship seems to be sinking quietly into the abyss, and salvation is nowhere in sight.
The spell seems to have taken hold as soon as the keel of the ill-fated jack-up rig (V351, being built in BSL yard at Dabhol) was laid. After 4 years of mismanagement, cost overruns (BSL built and broke the helipad 3 times before they finally got it right) and plain bad planning, the rig is still barely 60 percent complete. The launching of the vessel has been postponed over 5 times already.
(To cover the gross ineptitude of Bharati Shipyard would require a 600 page book, so I will leave that out for now; only fact worth mentioning being that the Dabhol yard has not produced a single vessel in the 7 years of its existence! Not even a fishing boat. Every order has been cancelled due to the inability of the yard to deliver).
Coming back to GOL, to understand the level of corruption and incompetency of its top brass, a few examples are worth mentioning:
1) The company went shopping for a new jack-up rig. The head of the drilling dept. was sent on a trip to Jabelali Sharjah, where he spotted an old, out of action jack-up; the ENSCO-50. After taking a precise 25 minute tour of the rig he advised the "powers that be" that the rig was in shape and worth the price. Only after they bought the rig, and the crew came on board,did they realized the rig was grossly inadequate for the high standards required by operators the world over, including our desi ONGC. The rig had only 3 mud-pits and 2 Mud pumps, due to which it was written off by ONGC, and had no hopes of securing a contract anywhere else in the world. The rig sat on the periphery of Lamprell docks for over a year. Fortunately, maybe due to a miracle (or the sincere prayers of its CEO, the straight, erstwhile and old-school sailor Soli E.) GOL found a buyer in a bunch of Iranians (who bought the rig only because they were more inept & corrupt than the people they were buying from). GOL made a quick buck and a quicker exit much to the relief of the management.
2) Every shareholder should take a trip to the accommodation barge “Gal Installer”. The barge has not been able to secure a contract for almost a year now. It is however the most heavily outfitted barge you can find in the world! It has 2 hydrophore units on every level. Usually ONE unit is more than enough to sustain the entire barge. This barge has SEVERAL. Same story with the cooling water pumps. It seems someone went out of the way to order 6 equipments wherever ONE was required. Why? The procurement calls were unilaterally made by a Mr. Mur***, who (in the opulent corridors of Energy House) has quite a reputation for skimming the fat off the top of the milk bucket.
Millions of dollars worth of excess equipments and spares are ordered, where none are required, and yet the critical criteria required for the vessels to clinch contracts are always falling short. So how come the same people keep getting picked to handle every dry dock repair for every single vessel? These are questions which should have been asked in the shareholders’ meetings a long time ago.
As the share prices dip to a new low week after week, this ship seems to be sinking quietly into the abyss, and salvation is nowhere in sight.