The Union government is committed to the development of the Lakshadweep Islands, Union Minister for Road Transport, Highways, and Shipping Nitin Gadkari has said.
He was speaking after dedicating a new passenger facility for the Lakshadweep Island Administration at the Kochi port and launching the new passenger-cum-cargo vessel mv Corals here on Friday.
The Minister said the NDA government did not want to mix politics with progress and development. He said that Kerala’s prosperity depended a lot on utilisation of its waterways and inland waterways could be developed to shift a lot more of cargo and passenger traffic onto the waterways.
While more than 40 per cent of cargo traffic was accounted for by waterways in China, India moved just a little more than 3 per cent of its cargo over its waterbodies.
He said that the Inland Waterways Corporation would be strengthened but it was time for the corporation to work out quality and cost factors.
K. V. Thomas and P. P. Mohammed Faizal, MPs; and Dominic Presentation and Hibi Eden, MLAs, were among those present at the occasion. H. Rajesh Prasad, Administrator of the Union Territory of Lakshadweep Islands, welcomed the gathering.
The dedicated passenger facility for the Lakshadweep Administration includes a 300-metre berth and passenger amenity centre, built at a cost of Rs.37 crore. mv Corals, built at the Colombo Dockyard, cost $29 million. Work on another vessel for the island administration, mv Lagoons, is under way at Colombo.
mv Corals is an all-weather vessel with a capacity to carry 400 passengers and made its maiden journey from Kochi to the islands on December 8.
