Tarun Karthick
Port Blair, 06 March 2024
Pawan Hans Limited (PHL) initiated helicopter services in the Islands on June 2, 2003. However, even in its 21st year of operation, the fate of passengers remains at the discretion of bureaucrats.
The decision of who gets to travel and who doesn’t is left to bureaucrats, making it incredibly challenging for ordinary Islanders to secure tickets, especially for those intending to travel from Port Blair to the Southern Group of Islands.
On Tuesday and Wednesday (March 5th and 6th, 2024), not a single common Islander was issued a helicopter ticket for travel from Port Blair to Campbell Bay. Instead, tickets on these days were exclusively allocated to government servants. Passengers seeking to return home or for other purposes were either waitlisted or not included in the ticket distribution by the bureaucrats.
This practice is not confined to just two days; it has been observed over the years that government servants, even for reasons as mundane as “resuming duty,” are prioritised over Islanders in need of travel, particularly those returning home after medical treatment.
The preference given to government servants in ticket allocation has emboldened them to exploit the service. Many government servants eschew shipping services altogether, opting to abuse helicopter services every time they intend to travel to remote Islands, depriving Islanders with genuine medical needs or other reasons to travel.
The subsidised helicopter service is heavily misused primarily by government servants. Various reasons, such as election duty or the urgent travel of government servants to resume duty in the public interest, are cited to deny tickets to Islanders.
It is imperative that common Islanders, for whom such heavily subsidised helicopter service was introduced, are given precedence in ticket allocation.