The Kerala Shipping and Inland Navigation Corporation (KSINC) will operate the Fort Kochi-Vypeen passenger boat service.
The corporation council meeting held here on Tuesday decided to entrust the task with the public sector company after incorporating the suggestions put forward by the Opposition councillors.
The Opposition and the civic administration had been engaged in a war of words for the past few weeks over the delayed project. The service is being offered as an alternative for the jhankar service which has to be suspended for creating a mooring facility for the roll on, roll off service.
The KSINC will operate the service until a special purpose vehicle is formed by the civic body for the operation of water transport facilities.
Monitoring panel
A monitoring committee with town planning standing committee chairperson Shiny Mathew, works standing committee chairman P.M. Harris, Opposition leader K.J. Antony, BJP councillor Shyamala Prabhu, and Corporation Secretary A.S. Anuja will be formed to keep tabs on the operation of the ferry service, it was announced in the council.
Earlier, the Opposition charged the civic administration of failing to take forward major development projects in the city. Led by Mr. Antony, the Opposition councillors held the civic administration responsible for failing to launch projects such as e-governance, completion of the new office building, ro-ro service and Smart City Mission projects.
Plan funds
Education standing committee chairperson Poornima Narayan and CPI(M) councillor Benedict Fernandez criticised the civic administrators for having scant regard for the utilisation of plan funds.
In her reply, Mayor Soumini Jain said the confusion over implementation of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) and the strike by contractors’ of the corporation had reflected on the low spending of plan funds. Steps were being taken to improve the performance, she said.
