Good news for the tourists!! Expansion of passenger jetty at Vivekananda rock memorial in Kanniyakumari dist!!
Posted on: 09/Sep/2023 9:24:04 AM
Many tourists normally wait for a long time in queues to take a trip to Vivekanadha Rock and Thiruvalluvar Statue in the Kanniyakumari district in Tamil Nadu. This waiting for a long time in the queues won`t be there for the tourists from now on.
It is now brought out that the PWD or public works dept is busy carrying out work to expand passenger jetty at the Vivekananda Rock Memorial. Point to be noted is that this work would be highly challenging and it would require transporting and using concrete blocks of 11 tones each for the construction of the passenger jetty. To reach these tourist spots, passenger boats are the only modes available now.
The Poompuhar Shipping Corporation has got 5 boats but just 2 boats are being operated daily due to inadequate length of jetty. There is now work going on to extend the 37m passenger jetty to 100m and to increase the width to 9m. This was mentioned by some officers from the PWD. By this expansion, 3 more boats could be added and a minimum of 450 passengers could be transported.
About 30% of the expansion project has been executed by the PWD and the project is partly funded by the TN Maritime Board. Chennai IIT based dept of Ocean Technology would be monitoring the project.
As per some PWD officials, 2 barges were used to transport 10 concrete blocks per trip from Chinnamuttom fishing harbour to the construction site. Every day, about 30 blocks along with the equipment were conveyed to the site. It is learnt that 5 to 10 divers were involved in positioning layers of concrete blocks in the sea-bed to a depth of 5.5m. The divers would place the blocks in the sea-bed using GPS & sensors etc. In the monsoon season the uneven sea-bed and rough sea condition would pose a huge challenge for the divers. The passenger jetty would be constructed using 1500 concrete blocks and a 12m gabion box set up would be provided to tackle the impact of tides.
