The inherent danger of the exceedingly popular riverine transport that serves as a link between the peripheral districts and Kolkata, was exposed yet again on Wednesday when a jetty collapsed into the Hooghly under the sheer weight of commuters, both incoming and outgoing and jostling to disembark from or board a launch. Till Friday morning, six persons had perished and 16 more were missing. The accident occurred during high tide and this makes it imperative for the transport department to address at least three vital issues that have plagued the ferry services. The first quite obviously is overcrowding, a thread that links the disaster at Telinipara in Bhadreswar to a not dissimilar tragedy in Kalna (Burdwan district) last May, not to forget such accidents in Bihar during religious festivals. There is no bar on the number of passengers a launch can carry, let alone a system to regulate the flow.

Apparently, Hooghly and Burdwan, the two neighbouring districts, are particularly vulnerable to this occasionally mortal mode of transport. The other is the nature of the construction; most of the jetties in West Bengal are erected on bamboo poles, stretches of which were missing after the latest catastrophe. Yet another is the importance of weather forecasts for the safety of the crew and the commuter. There was, for instance, no appreciation on Wednesday of the fact that a high tide was imminent. Educating boatmen on the resultant perils is imperative. Just as fishermen are told “not to go out to sea”, so too must the ferry services be put on alert. In most of the suburban stations, let alone Howrah, the ferry serves as an adjunct to railway operations. Yet the attention that it has received either from the river traffic police or the transport authorities has been woefully inadequate, almost perfunctory.

The jetty at Bhadreswar cried out for maintenance and additional safety measures. Not least because it was one of the three identified by the transport department for immediate overhaul and soil-testing. The second task was carried out three days before the collapse. In a word, the authorities ought to have realised that it was an endangered structure.

Thursday’s report of the transport department, underlining the fact that “the condition of many jetties is miserable” is only an attempt to be wise after the event. It is not only the stretch between Millennium Park and Chandannagar that is vulnerable; the survey must of necessity cover the state as a whole. Even the proposal to display arrival and departure timings at ghats is a fundamental that ought to have been in place long ago. The ferry is integral to both urban and rural transportation.