Gracy Tripathy & Vikramaditya
Port Blair, Feb 16: M V Kalighat returned to Port Blair nearly 10 days back after about two year long repair works at Cochin.
After arrival, the vessels went for a long sailing to Southern Group of Islands once but to the utter dismay of public, just before the second sailing for Campbell Bay via Nancowry this morning, the vessel developed technical snags in its main engine.
By the time the problem was made public, nearly 100 passengers had already boarded the vessel and all these passengers who had boarded the vessel by 9.30 AM were later asked to disembark by nearly 1.30 PM, when the sailing of MV Kalighat was officially postponed.
Many other passengers were waiting at the harbour and one can imagine the kind of inconvenience faced by these passengers, who came all the way to the harbour from different areas of South Andaman and again they had to return back to their respective places.
Talking to Andaman Sheekha many raised serious questions over the quality of repair works being carried out by the SCI, which has the responsibility of technical management of the Vessel.
“What is the use of such a long and expensive repair works at Mainland when the ship can’t even sail for a year without any major repair,” questioned a passenger today.
Meanwhile, passengers who travelled in the ship in its previous sailing told Andaman Sheekha that even after such extensive repair works, the AC is not effective inside the ship and there is some leakage of water in the cabins of front side. Another passenger told Andaman Sheekha that the seat covers of the deck are also not upto the standard.
Islanders are now demanding a judicial inquiry over the repair works of the vessel MV Kalighat in last nearly two years.
Meanwhile, most of the senior officers of Directorate of Shipping Services avoided calls from Andaman Sheekha today. Later talking to Andaman Sheekha, the Assistant Marine Engineer in Marine Dockyard mentioned that a particular critical spare part has got damaged and the marine dockyard is trying to make the part “in-house” at Marina Dockyard.
“Works are still going on. Once the part is ready and trials are made we can declare the ship ready to sail. We can’t assure 100 percent but we are hopeful that the vessel will be ready to sail by tomorrow afternoon,” the Assistant Marine Engineer added.
