Near-miss involving barges in Kochi; IWAI for heightened alert

Call for adherence to communication protocol between vessels and deployment of skilled crew members

Close calls involving barges on National Waterway-III, the latest being at Champakkara on Sunday, has prompted stakeholders to heighten their alert, with the Inland Waterways Authority of India (IWAI) shooting off letters to barge operators and the Kerala Maritime Board (KMB) to ensure adherence to communication protocol between vessels and to deploy skilled crew members.

The crew members must be familiar with the peculiarities of waterbodies their barges pass through. Sunday’s near-miss incident (involving a barge carrying rock phosphate to Ambalamugal and an ammonia carrier barge proceeding to Eloor) could have been avoided if crew members had communicated the position of each vessel well in advance while approaching the narrow waterbody at Champakkara, said Mathew George, Director of IWAI, which owns and maintains the waterway.

This is because it is tough to widen the corridor by acquiring land in the densely-populated area. A copy of the letter sent to the KMB has been forwarded to the District Collector (in his capacity as Chairman of the District Disaster Management Authority) to convene a meeting of stakeholders to prevent such incidents that could turn disastrous in case of collision, he added.