Archives

New travelling procedure for passenger ferry

by Channa Kasturisinghe

The only passenger ferry operating in the North and East "MV City of Trinco" has introduced a new ticketing procedure to facilitate people travelling between Trincomalee and Kankasanturai.

The relaxing of Ministry of Defence (MoD) regulations, with respect to civilians travelling to Jaffna has enabled the ferry service operating under ICRC protection to issue tickets without delay.

It takes over two weeks to arrange a trip for a person to go to KKS from Trinco but now we have a more simplified ticketing procedure, the General Manager of "GNKP Cruise Services (Pvt) Ltd," Capt. Anton P. Andrado told the media in Colombo yesterday.

"According to the new system of clearance, a passenger will fill a personal information sheet and hand over to the Duty Naval Officer and the ticket would be immediately issued. If there are no adverse reports against a passenger he or she will then be permitted to travel after four days of purchasing the ticket. Only the foreigners without acceptable document from their embassies have to get the MoD clearance," Capt. Andrado said.

He said that usually the ferry service operated two voyages per week but they would be able to operate three voyages in the future if the ICRC accepted the proposal.

"MV City of Trinco" began its operations in May 2000. We have already completed 120 voyages carrying over one hundred thousand passengers between the two cities. With the relaxing of the MoD regulations we would be able to carry more passengers in the future.

"The vessel can carry 400 passengers and 40 children. Earlier we issued only 90 tickets from Colombo and the rest from Trinco.

But as the demand from people from Colombo is expected to increase we might issue about 200 ticket from Colombo in the future," Mr. Andrado said.

The Finance Director of the cruise service said, from March they would issue tickets for eight voyages for a period of one month and the tickets will be issued on the first come first serve basis.

"We will open our new ticketing office Unicorn Overseas Services (Pvt.) Ltd. at Galleface Court, Colombo 03, from the first of next month," Mr. Thumbawila said.

GNKP Cruise Service belonged to Green Lanka Shipping Pvt. Ltd. Its Managing Director Capt. Gamini Nanayakkara said, the group was considering the launching of a passenger cruise operation between Colombo and Chennai in India in the future.

"If the security situation is normal we would be able to operate that service touching Trinco to facilitate people travelling from Colombo to Jaffna," Mr. Nanayakkara said.

News | Business | Features | Editorial | Security
Politics | World | Letters | Sports | Obituaries |

Produced by Lake House
Copyright 2001 The Associated Newspapers of Ceylon Ltd.
Comments and suggestions to :Web Manager