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Of capacity 'unlimited'

MORSHED ALI KHAN
How many passengers is a three-deck motor vessel allowed to carry?
In the navigational law books at the Department of Shipping, there is an answer to the question, but the answer is 'unlimited' in reality.
About 200 large passenger vessels, popularly known as doubledecked launches, use the Sadarghat Launch Terminal in the capital everyday. This figure includes arrivals and departures of vessels.
The capacity of each launch depends on its size. For instance, the MV Salahuddin-2 with a length of 32.76 metres and a width of 7.62 metres, which sank into the Meghna River Friday night with about 300 passengers aboard, was officially allowed to carry a maximum of 216 passengers. On Friday, there was no usual crowd of passengers at the terminal. And more than one source confirmed that even on 'a dull day like Friday' MV Salahuddin-2 was
carrying at least 400 passengers, if not more, because there were passengers even on the rooftop.
Chief Engineer and Ship Surveyor of the Department of Shipping Mohammad Motiur Rahman said that there must be a four square feet space for each passenger of the daytime vessel. But the nighttime vessel must have a space of six square feet for each passenger. The law says that if the vessel is fitted with chairs and benches, the space required for each passenger is 1.5 feet.
At the busiest launch terminal of Sadarghat, there is only one inspector of the Department of Shipping and three inspectors of the BIWTA, said the chief engineer.
"No matter how many passengers the vessel carries, it never crosses the load line marking engraved on its body in the front," he said.
The chief engineer, however, admitted that on special occasions like Eid-ul-Azha and Puja, overloading crosses the danger line.
With only one inspector for 100 departures from Sadarghat, it is almost impossible for him to check every vessel, he added.
But river transport workers at Sadarghat said it is an everyday practice by the launches to carry more passengers than their capacity. Usually, the vessel operators justify the illegal practice on the pretext that they were carrying less cargo aboard. One transport worker said the officials of the Bangladesh Inland Water Transport Authority (BIWTA) and of the Department of Shipping stationed at the terminals ignore the unscrupulous practice of overcrowding on a hefty monthly payment by the vessel owners.
A day after the MV Salahuddin-2
tragedy, the deputy director of the BIWTA and the officer-in-charge at the Sadarghat terminal said with vehemence that there were less than 200 passengers aboard and the launch capsize was 'nothing but a God's act'.
"The tragedy happened perhaps because of the twister, but it is now established that the vessel was carrying even more passengers than the permissible capacity," said a member of the Launch Owners' Association.
On condition of anonymity, he said nobody at the terminals cared about how much cargo a vessel is loading directly from large country boats into its hull.
When an accident takes place, there is no way to check how many passengers boarded the vessel or how much cargo it is carrying because there is no accountability whatsoever at the departure or arrival level.