Launch disaster one too many

The launch that sank was clearly overloaded. Incredible though it may sound, a survivor has divulged that the vessel was carrying passengers of another launch, which could not, for some reason or the other, make its scheduled journey. So the vessel might have been carrying double the number of passengers it had the capacity for. And all this has happened only a few months after a series of launch disasters claimed hundreds of lives.

What is evident from the latest capsize is that navigational rules are still honoured more in their breach than observance. But why? The fact of the matter is, the launch owners and operators who had been previously in breach of law got away, so that violation of rules has been a recurrent phenomenon. If the errant launch operators were punished, there would have been a deterrent effect and we wouldn't perhaps be witness to such tragedies time and again.

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We have to recall here that nor'westers in the month of April accounted for many launch accidents. The situation reached such a pass that launches were barred, for a brief period though, from operating during the most vulnerable hours in the evening. Apart from that, attempts were made to get at the root of the problem as to why so many launches capsized in such a short time. That led to categorisation of the vessels on the basis of their river worthiness. A number of vessels were found to be totally unfit for carrying passengers. But we have not yet heard of any follow-up measure in this respect.

The shipping minister himself addressed the issue and there was a short spurt of hyper-activity which created the impression that the government would not let the matter rest until some safety measures were put in place.

But when overloading, the most avoidable risk factor, has caused another major disaster it is hard to believe that the situation has changed.

We condole the deaths of the launch passengers and would like to urge the government to go beyond forming another probe body, which is of course necessary to ascertain the causes behind the capsize, but the emphasis must be on eliminating breach of rules. It is time also to make compensatory payments to families of launch accident victims mandatory. That itself could have a deterring effect.