This story is from June 25, 2016

Boat passengers taking safety for granted

Vineesh, a 24-year-old youth, who went missing in the Kochi backwaters near Marine Drive is yet to be traced.
Boat passengers taking safety for granted
Kochi: Vineesh, a 24-year-old youth, who went missing in the Kochi backwaters near Marine Drive is yet to be traced.
Coastal Police officials and personnel from the Fire and Rescue department continued the search for Vineesh on Friday. They focused on the northern side of the Kochi backwaters.
"We could not find him. There were strong undercurrents on Friday which made the search operation unsuccessful," said a police officer from Mulavukad police station, which has registered a case of man missing.
Despite the seriousness of the incident, boat passengers does not seem to be taking safety precautions while commuting through the backwaters, which has witnessed several such tragedies.

On Friday, passengers in transport and tourist boats were seen travelling without wearing life jackets even after boat workers handed them over.
"After the Fort Kochi tragedy, we are more careful and hand over life jackets to passengers. However, majority of the passengers do not wear jackets. Unfortunately, they all think nothing will happen to them," said a boat operator.
Passengers TOI spoke to said they are aware of the risk, but didn't think about it after entering the boat. Stakeholders including the Kochi corporation, Coastal Police and Cochin Port Trust (CPT) do not hold frequent inspections and fail to penalize boat operators who are lackadaisical when it comes to imposing security measures. Interestingly, officers of Coastal Police and CPT were seen engaging in search operation for Vineesh, in their respective boats, without wearing life jackets.
Vineesh, son of Viswanathan, Kaithamparambath at Pallippuram near Pattambi in Palakkad, fell into the water on Thursday along with his two colleagues, when the water scooter they were riding capsized at 12.13pm. Though boat workers rescued his two colleagues, they could not reach out to Vineesh.
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