THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The man who could have prevented the Thekkady boat tragedy, and the Thattekkad deaths two years ago, is now confined to his house in the capital city, reduced to writing long letters, mostly in vain, to the powers that be elaborating on the need for safe inland water transport practices.
If the governments were serious about their own commissions of inquiry, former Director of Ports and marine advisor to Government Captain P K R Nair would have been the State’s Safety Commissioner for Water Transport.
The creation of the post of a Safety Commissioner for Water Transport in the rank of Principal Secretary was the most radical recommendation made by the Justice K Narayana Kurup Commission that inquired into the Kumarakom boat accident in 2002.
On April 30, 2003, the Commission had appointed P K R Nair as the Safety Commissioner for Water Transport.
The Commissioner’s mandate was to ensure the safety of passengers and vessels by revamping the State Water Transport Department.
The Narayana Kurup Commission also wanted the commissioner’s officer to be free of all outside interference.
The UDF Government at that time and the LDF dispensation which followed stuck to convention.
Both ignored the Commission’s recommendation.
“I have not seen the boat that had capsized in Thekkady, but what I can say is that rigid standards have to be applied when a vessel is constructed with an upper deck,’’ Nair told Express while we interacted with him in his study, the walls of which are covered with motifs from his seafaring days.
Way back in the late 1950s, when Nair served as Hooghly Pilot in the Calcutta Port Trust, he had captained huge ships that sailed from the Calcutta Port to the far end of the Bay of Bengal along Hooghly’s most treacherous path, once described by Rudyard Kipling as “one hundred miles of the most dangerous river on earth.’’ The veteran, who had for a large part of his life navigated through hellish waters, feels that there was a gross violation of safety rules in the case of the boat that tilted over at Thekkady.
“Incompetent and ill-trained crew were manning the vessel.
And there were only two crew members, which is grossly insufficient to manage the vessel and the 76 passengers who were said to be on board. The inexperience and under-qualification of the driver is a major factor behind this calamity,’’ Nair said.
A Kerala Maritime Institute is Nair’s big dream; he calls it “my mission in life’’. His efforts, which began three decades ago, have borne fruit.
Nair was behind the first maritime institute in the country, the Kerala Institute of Nautical Studies (KINS), which opened at Vizhinjam in 1977. He was Ports Director then. Unfortunately, the Centre closed down KINS six months later.
Now, yielding to Nair’s conviction, the State Government has decided to set up two maritime institutes in the State, in Neeleswaram (Kasargod) and Kollam.
The main objective of the institutes is to train youths for jobs in merchant ships. But the institutes can also be used to train the crew for passenger boats.
“The institutes will teach the basics of navigation, engine operations and also meteorology.
The drivers will be taught to differentiate between, for instance, cumulus and cumulo nimbus clouds and what they signify,’’ Nair said.
He said it is a must for the boat crew to undergo training at the maritime institutes.
“Or else, it would be as scary as in an aircraft where the pilot doesn’t know how to fly,’’ Nair said.