The MV Nasrin-1 that sank in the Meghna river on Tuesday was overloaded with passengers and cargo. The triple-deck launch with a licensed capacity of 300 passengers loaded about 750 passengers, said sources.

A few passenger-vessels plying the inland waterways can withstand windy, rough weather, as most are built on faulty designs, said a high official of the shipping ministry requesting anonymity.

Over 2,000 big and medium-sized vessels are plying various routes covering more than 8,000 miles of waterways in Bangladesh.

The non-implementation of the government's safety measures is blamed on a longstanding feud among three groups involved in the sector: marine engineers, naval architects and captains.

The government's efforts to strengthen supervision on the vessels failed because of the conflict among those people, said sources in the shipping department.

A conflict between Bangladesh Inland Water Transport Authority (BIWTA) and Bangladesh Inland Water Transport Corporation (BIWTC) made the situation worse.

The government failed to shift the responsibility of design and plan approval for passenger vessels from the BIWTA because of the leverage of a strong nexus.

The nexus of BIWTA officials is accused of approving flawed designs for the vessels and helping their owners tamper with the original designs in exchange for money.

The engineers said all launches have been modelled on a Danish design of the 1980s. They said there are no guidelines for construction of launches. A set of guidelines was formulated in 2001, but it was not made effective as yet.

The government also failed to implement some decisions taken recently to ensure safety and security of passengers largely because of non-cooperation of the launch owners.

After the MV Mitali tragedy in April, a ban was imposed on launch travels between 4:00pm and 8:00pm for two months, but the authorities withdrew the embargo under pressure from the launch owners association.

An inquiry committee was formed after every disaster, but none of its recommendations was implemented, said the sources.

Shipping Minister Akbar Hossain claimed that a number of decisions for ensuring safety and security of passengers have been implemented.

But some could not be implemented because of lack of funds and non-cooperation of the launch owners and passengers, he said. Although the government requested passengers through media not to board overloaded vessels, the campaign did not work.

The authorities are planing to set up seven radar stations to give cautionary signals of sudden storms or nor'westers, he said. The Tk 12 crore plan for the radar stations is awaiting approval from the planning ministry.

A trustee board has also started working to compensate the families of launch disaster victims, he said.

The government had imposed another ban on 40 big passenger launches identified as unfit, but backtracked on the decision immediately after pressure from the launch owners.

But the launch owners said the decision should be implemented in phases not to disrupt waterway communications.

Officials told The Daily Star that the shipping ministry gave all vessels two to six months' time to improve flawed designs to be fit for plying and threatened not to renew their registrations in failure.

Although a number of internationally reputed foreign consultants suggested that the government set up an inland shipping safety administration, it is yet to come into being.