Volunteers wearing gloves scooped up the thick tar with shovels off Kamarajar Port in Chennai (AFP)
With Chennai in the middle of its worst environmental disaster ever, hundreds of students and fishermen are working Friday to clean up an oil spill on India's southern coast.
The Coast Guard says that around 35 kilometres off the Chennai coastline has been affected by the spill which occurred when two ships carrying fuel collided last week.
Campaigners and fishermen have accused the government of being slow to contain the damage from the spill, the scale of which has only emerged in recent days.
"What ought to have been a localised incident has now become a regional one because of the culture of denial," said Nityanand Jayaraman, a Chennai-based environmental activist.
"The key thing is not technology but honesty. You need to reveal the true extent of the damage otherwise it leads to a false sense of complacency. With oil spills long-term effects are certain," said Mr Jayaraman.
The Coast Guard says that around 35 kilometres off the Chennai coastline has been affected
Local fishermen also criticised the speed of the official response to the spill.
"They (authorities) didn't remove it immediately, and so now it has spread across all beaches, including Marina (beach)," K. Bharati of the Fishermen's Welfare Association in South India said, referring to a popular local beach.
Volunteers wearing gloves could be seen scooping up the thick tar with shovels off Kamarajar Port in Chennai.
Members of the Pollution Response Team lift the body of an oil-covered turtle
"We have tried all kind of technology and found that only manual cleaning is possible. So we have deployed more than 500 people, they are working really hard," M.A. Bhaskaran, chairman of Kamrajar Port, told reporters.