Conduct area wise Safety Audit; Tour Operators
Staff Correspondent
Port Blair, Jan 29: In a welcome step the Lt. Governor has recently ordered safety audit of all tourists vessels of A & N Islands. In his today’s speech the Lt. Governor has also mentioned that out of 26 vessels, checked till now, 20 vessels do not possess proper documents.
During the same meeting the Lt. Governor has also said that this incident should not leave negative impact on tourists but the way the safety audit is being conducted, negative impact is going to Mainland India and other countries about Andaman Tourism.
Firstly all tourist places, which can be reached via boats have been closed all of a sudden. Right from Jolly Bouy, Ross Island, Viper to North Bay every prominent tourists spot have been closed, leaving present batch of tourists in the soup.
Worst hit are the tour operators who have to face the burnt of tourists’ anger.
“It is very difficult to convince tourists, who come here spending thousands of rupees, that tourist spots are closed and they will have to sit inside their room. Tourists find themselves cheated,” said a tour operator.
Tour Operators now urge the Administration to conduct the safety audit area wise and to allow those boats to operate which have cleared survey recently, so that tourism business can be run without any hiccups and tourists do not go back with a negative impression.
“Atleast the Administration should publish a notice in The Daily Telegrams. So that we can show the same to the tourists and convince them,” the Tour Operator said.
The best thing Administration can do it is to perform a quick safety check of the boats. Reduce the intake capacity to 60%, make wearing the life jacket compulsory, deploy 1 or 2 navy/coast guard boats for rescue in the area and run the tourists boats so that the tourist are not felt cheated and do not take another sad story from beautiful Islands. No compromise on safety.
Also I am wondering why the navy/coast guard can not be asked to take over these boats for the time these audits and other paper works are done. May be for 15 days or 1 month? Navy/Army/Coast Guards are coefficient handle the situation in a much better way.
In parallel the Adm can conduct all the paper works and other checks.
What we all need to do it to find out a way which is safe and secure and come up with the temporary arrangement for the tourist who have already arrived and those arriving in near future.
A fair deal.