Safety of cruise vessels at stake

Kochi: While the inspecting authorities claim to be short- staffed, many of the cruise boats operating on city routes continue to blatantly flout norms, endangering the lives of passengers who use them in Kochi's  backwaters.

The problem is huge as over 400 boats, several  carrying tourists and local passengers, operate on various routes in the city.

Although the boat operators have been instructed to have safety equipment like  life jackets , life buoys and a wireless system for communication on board, most  simply ignore these requirements, according to industry insiders.

On  weekends and holidays, when cruise boats carry more people than they should, many passengers are shunted off to the upper deck, which makes the journey even more dangerous, going by experts, who insist that the lower and upper decks must  have a proportionate number of passengers for the sake of safety.

But ask  private boat operators why they choose to put people's lives at risk and they claim boats operating on city  routes have adequate life saving gadgets on board. They only give life jackets a miss as passengers refuse to wear them, they maintain.

Admitting that his department is aware of cruise boats not meeting safety norms,  Mr K R Vinothu, chief surveyor of the Department of Ports, however, claims regular inspections are not possible due to shortage of staff. “The lack of interest shown by the cruise operators in complying with safety norms adds to the problem. They usually have everything in place during inspections and then simply  ignore the safety guidelines. There are reports of safety norms being thrown to the wind from Alappuzha too where hundreds of houseboats and cruise vessels operate on several routes,” he said, when contacted, however, assuring that the surveyor would be asked to conduct regular inspections to check for safety features on board cruise boats and also for the validity of licenses of boats operating from Marine Drive.