Unsafe launches still plying!

Exactly two months back, a task force of the inland water transport authority carried out a survey among 10 per cent of 1500 passenger launches supposed to be plying our river routes. They found at least 100 unfit for navigation or of substandard quality. In reports, filed to the ministry, they put 57 of them in D category calling for their outright withdrawal from operation. Forty launches were placed in C category meaning that they were of low quality but could resume operation after necessary repairs have been carried out.

Unfit among the surveyed launches have not been ordered off the river routes nor has there been any safety upgrading of the launches placed in C category. So, it has been rank incorrigibility about setting things right. But what obviously puts the foot in the mouth is that only 10 per cent of the launches have been surveyed leaving out 90 per cent whose conditions we remain completely in the dark about.

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Even by the standards of shipping ministry's low intensity law enforcement, isn't it baffling that despite pinpointing the exact number of defective and unfit launches no heads have rolled nor punitive action taken against anybody. The only explanation can be that the authority has been acquiescent before the powerful coterie of launch owners.

Whenever an inspection campaign gets underway or mobile courts sit, the tendency towards overloading passengers and cargo appears to be kept on hold. The enforcement or vigilance exercise over, it becomes business as usual. The behaviour on the part of the authorities to be hyper-active in the wake of launch disasters must be shunned. Inspection should be a matter of routine, instead of being a seasonal affair that eventually smacks of playing to the gallery.

The owners and operators owe it to the nation to upgrade the safety standards of river journeys more than ever before. Why? Because on the 8th of July this year, as many as 800 passengers died in a single launch disaster. That horrendous toll added to the 3000 lives having been already lost through 300 launch accidents, big and small, since the independence of the country.