Registration of new boats and their annual survey are set to take the online route in Kerala, doing away with the need for owners of tourist and other boats to do multiple visits to the offices concerned of the Ports department.
The department is in the final leg of readying an app to streamline the process, and it will go online in a month. This apart, steps are being taken to carry out the annual survey (fitness test) of boats within 10 days of receiving the application, for which more surveyors have been deployed. There was also better cooperation with Kerala Tourism to ensure that all houseboats adhered to safety norms, said sources.
The developments come in the wake of boat operators crying foul about the hassles they have been encountering to register their vessels owing to shortage of surveyors. As per the Kerala Inland Vessel (KIV) Rules, all mechanically propelled boats must be registered with the department, while the annual survey and dry docking done every five years are critical to ensure that they operate in adherence with safety norms. Steps had also been taken to enforce rules and to confine boats that operated in violation of rules to detention yards with the help of the police, they added.
Meanwhile, the Marine Drive Tourist Boats’ Association is up in arms against the proposal to close down the department’s Kochi regional office that catered to survey and other requirements of hundreds of tourist boats that operated in Ernakulam and Idukki districts. “We will have to visit the department’s office in Kodungallor that is located at a remote place. There have been occasions when boat owners had to visit the office there many times when the officials concerned were not present in the office. We had taken up this issue with Minister for Industries P. Rajeeve since Ernakulam district has the maximum number of tourist boats in Kerala. It is also the State’s maritime hub,” said Saju T.B., secretary of the association.
Kerala Maritime Board (KMB) Chairman N.S. Pillai said a regional office of the department was retained in Kochi after the headquarters was shifted to Thiruvananthapuram in 2022. There is now no need of the regional office, since personnel of the Kodungaloor office are in charge of survey and other inspections of boats.
