Southern States - Kerala   

Ship service to Colombo from next month

By Our Staff Reporter

KOCHI NOV. 29. The first vessel between Thiruvananthapuram and Colombo is expected to be launched by the first week of December, the Minister for Transport, R. Balakrishna Pillai, said here today.

The Department also has plans to operate passenger vessels between Thiruvananthapuram, Kochi and Kozhikode, he added.

Inaugurating a Traveller's Facilitation Centre, constructed by the Department of Tourism, at the KSRTC bus stand here, Mr. Pillai said the cash debt of the Kerala State Road Transport Corporation (KSRTC) had come down from Rs. 562 crores two-and-a-half years ago to Rs. 220 crores.

Most of the remaining debts are dues to be paid to the employees.

He said the Department was planning to pull out of service buses that were older than 5 years, within three years.

He said the process was already on to take off the road all fast passenger and super fast buses older than 2 years.

In his presidential address, the Minister for Tourism and Fisheries, K.V. Thomas, said that similar facilitation centres would be built in all the 62 bus stands and work on eight of them were progressing.

He said though there was heavy rush at pilgrim centres such as Sabarimala and Kalady, the infrastructure available at these places was not up to the mark.

The Department of Tourism was focussing on improving the basic facilities, he said.

The Kochi Mayor, C.M. Dinesh Mani, and Sebastian Paul, MP, were the chief guests on the occasion.

V.K. Ibrahim Kunju and Ludy Louis, both MLAs, the Managing Director of KSRTC, C.K. Appukuttan Nair, and the Kochi Corporation councillor, Winny Abraham, spoke.

The Secretary, Kerala Tourism, T. Balakrishnan, welcomed the audience and the Secretary, Department of Transport, G. Rajasekharan, proposed vote of thanks.

The superintending engineer, KSRTC, A. Manickavasavam, presented the report.

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