Sunday night’s boat accident at Tanur in which 22 people died was waiting to happen with many in the sector constantly flagging what they termed as laxity of enforcement agencies in preventing overloading of boats.
The Kerala Maritime Board (KMB) is the authority that ought to ensure fitness, licensing, and safe operation of all tourist vessels, including houseboats, in the State. While the stakeholders blame it on the board’s apathy in carrying out inspections, officials say they are facing acute shortage of surveyors and the delay in constituting an enforcement wing to enforce the Kerala inland Vessels (KIV) Rules 2010 in letter and spirit.
President of the Kerala Houseboat Owners’ Federation Jobin J. Akkarakalam says fatal accidents such the ones at a dozen tourist locales in the past two decades can recur any moment, especially in Alappuzha, where fire accidents and sinking of houseboats have been reported almost every year.
“Rather than taking action against unlicensed operators, enforcement officials often issue stop memo to those that have licence.”
Unscrupulous boat operators have been playing havoc with the life of tourists for long in Kerala, says Saju T.B., secretary of the Marine Drive Tourist Boats’ Association, referring to overloading of boats. There is no system to ascertain overload, even after the formation of KMB. Accidents like the one at Tanur could have been avoided if enforcement agencies and local bodies were vigilant, he says.
Neelakandan Unni, Director (retd) of Inland Waterways Authority of India, says the Tanur accident is the outcome of unregulated and unprofessional nature of Kerala’s inland-water transport sector.
Tourism image
With boat operators flouting safety norms, the question is when the next tourist-boat accident will happen. The KMB and other agencies must treat the problem with due seriousness, especially since people’s life and the image of Kerala as a tourism destination are at stake. There will be few takers for tourism devoid of safety norms. One cannot single out boat operators for blame, regulatory authorities must be held accountable. The trend of regularising design violations of boats with a fine, following political pressure, must end, says Mr. Unni.
Avoidable accident
Conceding that the ill-fated boat in Tanur was once a fishing vessel and modified as a tourist boat with capacity to ferry 22 people, sources in the KMB says the accident could have been avoided but for the operator preferring to take more than double the number of people on board, including on the upper deck.
“An amendment to KIV Rules in 2015 speaks of the need to form an enforcement wing, whose uniformed personnel must be deployed across the State. This has remained a non-starter. Recommendations to install CCTVs that have one-month storage capacity on boats and prominently displaying the seating capacity and licence of each vessel ought to be taken note of.”
They say how a directive to constitute a special police force headed by a DySP-rank officer to enforce KIV Rules has remained on paper. “The KMB is managing with just two surveyors to inspect boats for the entire State. This makes it tough to clamp down on rickety vessels and those that resort to overloading.”
