DJ Venkatesh
Aerial Bay, Feb 02: The Aerial Bay jetty at Diglipur is being extended to nearly 75 metres in length and 15 metre in width and for this, the extension work is going on since last three months. The cost of entire project is nearly Rs. 9.5 Crores.
According to details, as per plan presently piling work is going on at the Jetty but alleged careless execution of work is posing serious risk for the vessels at Diglipur. As per reports presently big iron plates are welded for this at the portside posing high risk to the passenger as well as cargo ships.
Already passenger ship MV Kachal suffered minor damages recently due to these iron plates. Now MV Coral Queen deployed for Diglipur this week, which is also at risk while berthing. Some passengers told Andaman Sheekha that this extension of plates outside the jetty (Portside) also puts passengers’ life in danger.
For proper safe berthing, vessels often use Fenders to avoid collusion with jetty. Presently Diglipur is not having a single usable Fender at Aerial bay jetty, which are used to avoid collusion of the ships with jetty.
Indian Coast Guard is presently having few Yokohama Fenders which are being used for the berthing of Coast Guard and Naval Ships. Few small fenders were lying at Aerial Bay jetty which is of no use for big ships and few were taken on loan from the Coast Guard by authorities at Diglipur which are also of no use.
Passengers are now happy with the deployment of big ship for Diglipur sector and slowly the number of passengers and patients are increasing in each sailing. Now public worries that due to this shortage of fenders, if tomorrow passenger vessels refuse to sail to Diglipur that it will be a huge loss for entire Diglipur region.
