Despite repeated reminders that boat passengers should wear life jackets, safety takes a back seat in mechanised boats that travel across the River Cauvery, between Poolampatti and Nerinjipettai. – Photo: P. Goutham

The daily boat ride across River Cauvery in picturesque Poolampatti in Salem district throws safety to the winds.

These rides have never conformed to the laid-down safety rules, which the government has recently prescribed.

The people in Poolampatti and its neighbouring villages cross the river in mechanized wooden boats to Nerinjipettai in Erode on the other side of the bank and Mettur for their routine and daily work.

While many work as daily labourers on the other side, a few others have their business interests on both sides of the river. Hence the frequent ‘commuting’ in boats has come to stay.

For them a journey by road will be a tortuous and roundabout way. The fare also is not economical when compared to the charges for a boat ride across the river.

Moreover it is an enormous time saver. Hence locals prefer boat rides instead of road travel.

This has prompted a few to undertake the ferrying across the river, which has been going on for years now.

Poolamapatti draws droves of tourists who love to have a ride across the river.

The local panchayats hold the right to lease the right to ferry boats in the river.

This has been a practice for years now in almost all the village panchayats in the districts of Salem and Dharmapuri where coracles and boats ferry regularly the passengers from one side to the other.

But after the tragic boat tragedy at Thekkadi in Kerala, the Tamil Nadu government had issued charter safety guidelines to boat operators including to its Boat Clubs in hill stations.

Wearing life jackets had become mandatory. But the native boat operators such as the ones in Poolampatti have their own problems.

“We have not been asked to provide life jackets to our passengers. Where can we go for money to procure them? We transport them for cheap tariff of Rs. 3 for a distance a bus operator will charge Rs. 15,” a mechanised boat operator said.

But the fact remains that many in the past had met watery graves due to leaking boats and capsizing coracles.

But still the people of this region are taking a ride across the river – blissfully unaware of the lurking dangers.

Source: THE HINDU