The boat tragedy at Tanur in Malappuram which claimed 22 lives has once again brought the spotlight back on the State water transport sector.
According to the statistics available with the Kerala Maritime Board (KMB), which acts as the nodal agency for all maritime-related activities in the State, including issuing license for boats operated in Kerala, the State has around 3,513 ‘registered’ passenger boats. However, no statistics are available with the agency with regard to the number of annual passenger footfalls in the State water transport sector.
Speaking to The Hindu, T.P. Salimkumar, chief executive officer of the KMB, said the board was planning to introduce a technology-integrated platform to enforce regulatory norms and bring the sector under the close watch of enforcement agencies. Though other modes of transport have introduced advanced technology for tracking vehicles, fleet management, and other navigation purposes, including GPS technology, no such innovations have been introduced in the water transport sector in a major way, he said.
“It is true that the sector needs advanced innovations in tune with the times. However, this may be of no use if the rules and regulations are not abided by the operators,” said a senior executive engineer in the maritime industry.
For instance, there is a waterline mark on the hull of each vessel. It indicates how many passengers a vessel can carry and remain safe on the water. Considering the fact that overloading is one of the reasons for 90% of the boat accidents in the State, whatever technological interventions are made is pointless if overcrowding is allowed,” he said.
A key mandate of the KMB is to ensure stability of vessels and their seaworthiness through periodic inspections. However, the KMB faces certain limitations in ensuring that all boat services are operated strictly in compliance with the instructions in the rule book. “But we hope that we can address this issue to a certain extent by bringing in technological interventions at a time when there has been a steady increase in the number of passengers and registrations of new boats and houseboats,” says N.S. Pillai, chairman of the KMB.
Inland water transport is run by various departments in the State. Among these, the State Water Transport department operates the highest number of 758 trips a day, ferrying close to 50,000-70,000 passengers daily. Further, the Kerala Shipping and Inland Navigation Corporation, the Tourism department, the Kerala Tourism Development Corporation, the Kerala State Electricity Board (hydel tourism services), the Forest department and so too conduct boat services.
