Kolkata: The West Bengal Transport Department is setting up a Search and Rescue centre on the Hooghly River for 24-hour surveillance on all water vessels.
These Search and Rescue centres will be located at four locations on the 120 km Hooghly river that will be monitored from Nurpur to Triveni.
The four centres will be located at Konnagar, Bauria, Athpur and Falta. The prime functions of these centres will be to maintain 24×7 surveillance on the Hooghly waterways and rescue passengers and crew during any accidents.
To oversee and control the whole system, there will be a Command and Control Centre developed near the Shibpur Botanical Garden.
A total of Rs 14.5 crore will.be spent on this project. The funding will come from the World Bank, with the implementation done by West Bengal Infrastructure Development Corporation under the Transport Department.
The focus areas for both the Rescue and Command Centres include 24×7 surveillance on Hooghly waterways, managing rescue efforts during accidents, routine river patrolling, training staff of waterways vehicles, warning waterways vessels about potential dangers and controlling Ganga pollution.
Another aim of this project is to revive waterway transport on the Hooghly. This would ease thr increasing road traffic pressure on Kolkata and its surrounding areas.
The Hooghly Ferry services will also improve and that will necessitate the Rescue centres to come into action sooner rather than later.
The River Information Services is already functioning to monitor the positions of water vessels and their movements, predict weather, check tide and ebb timings and measure river depth.
This same technology will be used by both the Command Centre and the Rescue Centres. Modern devices are being purchased and the workforce is being trained for the 24-hour service.
The Command and Control Centre will specially track thr waterways vessels, undertake cruise monitoring, warn about impending danger, douse fire and reduce oil pollution on the Ganga.
