Day-time express passenger carrier and river cruising vessel Bay
Cruise-1 plying on Dhaka-Barisal-Dhaka route was rescued 20 hours
after stranded on shoal near Barisal river port with Eid passengers.
Some parts of the vessel broken and these need to be repaired to
restore operation on the route on Wednesday morning, said port
authority and vessel agent.
Abul Bashar Majumdar, deputy director Bangladesh Inland Water
Transport Authority and river safety and traffic management in charge
of Barisal port, said the vessel ran aground on shallow water shoal on
Kirtankhola river near Shayestabad-Charmonai area, about 4 kilometers
far from Barisal port, while coming from Dhaka with 87 passengers on
board on Monday evening.
Hearing the incident BIWTA authority sent salvage vessel and evacuate
the stranded passengers within 9:00 pm Monday night.
However attempt to recover the stranded vessel from the shoal and
floating it again for service were not successful till 2:30 pm
Tuesday.
Then the vessel was floated on river about 3:00 pm on manual process
and tugged to Barisal port about 4:00 pm Tuesday, he added.
Officials of the liner were not available to make any comment.
Its local agent Mohsin Talukdar said the bearing of the steering wheel
broken and the vessel would resume service on Wednesday morning after
repairing the parts.
However the crews of the vessel wishing to remain anonymous blamed
BIWTA for failure to mark under water shoals needed for safe
navigation during monsoon season when water flows on rivers increased.
BIWTA officials partially acknowledging their failure in marking
shallow and under water shoals said the vessel claimed to be equipped
with global positioning system, radar, automated hydraulic wheels to
avoid such type of accident.
Twin hull very fast watercraft Bay Cruiser 1 was built in 1995 and
launched in Bangladesh 2012 having a very low draft and very fast for
inland destinations with 252 passenger capacity started plying on
Dhaka-Barisal-Dhaka day-service from April 28, 2013.
During inaugurating the service the vessel operators claimed that
vessel enjoys a certification from the Korean Registry (KR) and has in
built all internationally recognized regularly drilled and checked
fire fighting and safety equipments, off line and online reservation
and ticketing system.
However within a short time the service became irregular as regular
mechanical faults of the vessel forced cancellation of trips and lost
passengers attraction, said Md Nasiruddin, a businessman and passenger
of the vessel.
Either the vessel was not equipped with the claimed modern equipments
or the crews of the vessel were inefficient to ply on inland
waterways, said Saidur Rahman Rintu, vice president launch owners’
association ply on the same route. –Our Correspondent, Barisal
