Commuters in the Vypeen-Fort Kochi corridor are struggling to travel in both directions due to the delay in dry-docking Sethusagar-1, a ro-ro ferry that was withdrawn from service in November.
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That, and the subsequent availability of only Sethusagar-II, its sister ro-ro ferry, has resulted in NGOs such as the Vypeen Janakeeya Kootayma and passenger organisations coming down heavily on the State government and the Kochi Corporation, for what they termed as the apathy to the plight of several commuters dependent on the ferry service each day. Their sole alternative to the less-than-10-minute ro-ro trip is to travel over 18 km through a network of congested roads and bridges in their vehicles, which used to be ferried through the ro-ro vessels.
The Vypeen Janakeeya Kootayma president Majnu Komath, who has been in the forefront of agitations demanding a third ro-ro ferry (which can be used as a spare vessel) in the corridor, said the vessels were used worldwide as floating bridges, preventing investment of hefty amounts on bridges. “The delay in resuming the operations of Sethusagar-1 has resulted in serpentine queues of vehicles on both sides, or people being forced to commute through bottlenecked bridges to reach the other side. This in turn has been worsening congestion on roads and bridges that lead to Fort Kochi,” he said.
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Government agencies did little, even when visitors thronged Fort Kochi from around the world for the Kochi Muziris Biennale, said Johney Vypeen, the NGO’s convenor. “Not a stone was moved, although ₹10 crore was earmarked in the 2022-23 State Budget to procure a third ro-ro ferry, apparently since the government has not handed over funds to the Kochi Corporation,” he said.
The Kootayma has also been demanding steps to redesign the ro-ro Jetty at Vypeen, so that CV Raman, a container ro-ro owned by the Inland Waterways Authority of India (IWAI), can be deployed in the Vypeen-Fort Kochi corridor whenever any of the conventional ro-ro ferries were withdrawn from service.
Sources in the Kerala Shipping and Inland Navigation Corporation (KSINC), which operates the ferries, said many key components of the ro-ro ferries were imported ones, necessitating the wait of many weeks and even months to procure them. “They are also very costly. Frequent delays in repairing the vessels which broke down could have been avoided if the Cochin Shipyard had relied more on indigenous components.”
Responding to concerns over the inordinate delay in restoring the service of the second ro-ro ferry, Mayor M. Anilkumar said the Kochi Corporation recently paid ₹3 crore in advance to the Cochin Shipyard in order to reserve space for dry-docking. “I also spoke to higher-ups in the Shipyard, who said they were waiting for spare parts to arrive from abroad. We at the Corporation have requested that preparatory works for dry-docking begin, even before the spares arrived, to speed up the process, and they agreed,” he said.
He added that the civic agency had already spent ₹9 crore on dry-docking and allied works on the two vessels, during the past 30 months. “As for the third ro-ro ferry, I have taken up the matter with the State government many times,” said the Mayor.