The Hindu : Kerala News : Action plan for waterways development on the anvil

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Jun 20, 2005

Kerala

Kerala

Action plan for waterways development on the anvil

Mohamed Nazeer

Steps taken to get feedback from operators, passengers

CHEAP TRANSPORT: There is substantial potential to be tapped in the inland waterways of about 1,500 km through the backwaters, canals and rivers in the State.

KANNUR: Even as inland water navigation in the State has been in a disorganised and neglected state, steps are now under way to get feedback from boat operators and users as part of preparing an action plan for waterways development under the World Bank-aided Kerala State Transport Project (KSTP).

Australia-based consulting agency Snowy Mountains Engineering Corporation (SMEC), which has been appointed by the State Government to formulate a draft policy for the development of inland water transport (IWT) in the State, has already started its initiative to collect feedback from the operators, including private, as well as boat users on improvements to be made on the passenger boats, jetties and landing facilities.

According to sources involved in the initiative, the efforts to get the feedback from the stakeholders in the IWT in the State, including the operators and passengers, have brought out the fact that people have got so used to the existing system that they cared less to complain about it. Many of the 40 jetties in the Kannur-Kasaragod sector as well as boat operation there, for example, leave much to be desired about the existing waterways system in the region, they say. The existing tendency to relate waterways to tourism is also a hurdle to development of IWT, primarily for cargo transport, they add.

Parvez Ali Anwar Khan, a Dhaka-based IWT specialist working for SMEC under its initiative to prepare an institutional strengthening action plan under the KSTP, visited some of the boat jetties in Kannur and Kasaragod districts on June 16 as part of collecting views and suggestions of boat operators and passengers on the reasons for the declining trend in the use of waterways, current boat cruising problems and improvement of existing facilities for encouraging passenger and cargo transport.

The KSTP and SMEC had recently conducted a workshop in Kochi on IWT policy to elicit views and suggestions from operators, users and officials of various Government departments and agencies involved in waterways development in the State. Deputy Chief Engineer (Irrigation) T. Rameshan Achary, Kerala State Water Transport Department Director G. Mohana Kumar, K. K. Abdul Gafoor of the Kerala Shipping and Inland Navigation Corporation, and Chief Inspector of Boats Johnson Mathew, among others, were present.

The workshop presented that inland navigation was cheapest as the transportation cost was 55 paise per tonne/km by waterways as against Re.1 by road. It was also fuel-efficient, as one HP can move 150 kg cargo on road, 500 kg by railways and 4,000 kg cargo by waterways. The State has a huge potential for waterways development as it has 41 navigable rivers, over 20 backwaters, numerous canals and cross-canals and the 558-km-long West Coast Canal (WCC) from Thiruvananthapuram to Hosdurg in Kasaragod.

Mr. Khan at the workshop highlighted that the total length of navigable waterways had come down from 1,900 km in 1974 to 1,768 km in 2005. Waterways in the State accounted for just three per cent of the cargo transport. The Government of India in 1993 had declared part of the WCC from Kottappuram to Kollam as National Waterways. An IWT pilot project was launched in the 93-km-long Alappuzha-Kottayam-Vaikom sector under the KSTP as part of improving transportation by waterways.

According to Mr. Khan, the major problems facing waterways development in the State included inadequate depth caused by silting and lack of maintenance, bank erosion and lack of shore protection works, lack of adequate navigation aids, modern terminals, jetties and landing stages, modern cargo handling equipment, aged mechanised vessels, non-mechanised country boats that were too old and small to carry bulk cargo, water hyacinths and inadequate funding.

According to the data presented at the workshop, road networks in the State had recorded a 42.14 per cent increase during 1974-2004, while the length of navigable rivers decreased by 11 per cent during the period.

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