John Wilbert & Savita Kumari
Port Blair, Feb 23: Nearly 80 ship passengers faced great deal of hardship this morning after sailing of MV Bharat Seema was cancelled on technical reasons.
Although the Directorate of Shipping Services had issued a press note last night at 10.10 pm saying that due to technical reasons, the scheduled sailing of MV Bharat Seema for Little Andaman on 23.02.2022 at 1000 Hrs Port Blair and return on the same day at 2100 Hrs has been postponed, but most of the newspaper could not carry the news because of the delay, hence passengers were clueless about the technical snags.
Passengers alleged that when they asked staffs about the reason for cancellation, they were neither informed about the problems nor were given any confirmation about the next sailing. Hence many angry passengers decided not to leave the passengers hall of Haddo Jetty.
Later at around 10:00 AM in the morning a team of PS Chatham reached the spot and asked passengers to leave the jetty.
When Andaman Sheekha Daily contacted the senior officer in Directorate Shipping Services, he said that the ship has developed some technical snags and the Directorate is waiting for a detailed report from the Shipping Corporation of India.
“Once we get the green signal from SCI, the sailing will resume,” he said.
However, he assured that if the technical issue is solved within 24 hours then the new date of sailing will be announced or else some other ship will be arranged for Hut Bay.
