Roni Antony
Port Blair, May 15: A group of nine tourists today experienced horrible time in Swaraj Dweep during their one day tour to the world famous Island.
According to them, they arrived Port Blair two days back and they reached Swaraj Dweep yesterday. As per plan they were scheduled to visit Elephanta Island this morning but to their utter dismay, the boat operator, who took them to Elephanta, was not having proper documents. Hence during police check the dinghy was not allowed to go upto Elephanta beach and was sent back.
The problems for the tourists did not end there after reaching the Jetty area, one of the tourist, 65 years old Dr. Ambar Rastogi, got her leg trapped in dinghy ropes, which resulted in a fracture.
At Havelock Hospital the staffs could not take a X-Ray of the old lady just because there was no power in Hospital.
Finally the patient was referred to Port Blair and anyhow they reached Port Blair by MV Bambooka vessel but again they were shocked to see, how badly the vessel was maintained.
Tourists alleged that the vessel did not even have basic facility for patients. The problem did not end for the tourists even after reaching Port Blair. At Jetty, there was no ambulance for the patient, despite of the fact that everybody knew that a patient is reaching Port Blair from Swaraj Dweep. Later after nearly 30 minutes an ambulance reached the Jetty to take the passenger to G B Pant.
Atlast the group any how reached G B Pant Hospital at around 7.30 PM. Although the patient is in good hands now but the entire day was enough to prove how unprepared Andaman Tourism is towards injured tourists and how unprofessionally entire tourism industry is being run in Andaman.
