Vijayawada: Water aerodrome on the anvil in Krishna

Vijayawada: The state government and the ministry of civil aviation are jointly planning to set up a water aerodrome on River Krishna at the Berm Park near Prakasam Barrage here to facilitate landing and taking off seaplanes for encouraging tourism.

Krishna district collector A Md Imtiaz, special chief secretary Karikala Valavan, chief executive officer (CEO) of AP Airports Development Corporation Nina Sharma along with other officials visited the Berm Park to study the possibility of setting up water aerodrome, including the available infrastructure.

The seaplanes which would be operated from here would likely to be plied to Papikondalu, Nagarjuna Konda and even Hyderabad. After the technical teams completed the study, the report would be submitted to the government.

Later, addressing the media, the district collector said that water aerodrome would help the development of tourism in the region.

Nina Sharma said the civil aviation ministry would invest Rs 50 crore and the state government would provide infrastructure facilities at a cost of Rs 10 crore for the water aerodrome. She said that the Berm Park and Bhavani Island had wonderful facilities which would attract the tourists from other places in the state and even the neighbouring states of Telangana, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka.

Joint collector Madhavi Lata, sub-collector H M Dhyan Chandra, Vijayawada West tahsildar M Madhuri, deputy executive engineer Ch Gopinath, Prakasam Barrage AEE V Dinesh Raghavendra Kumar, Aviation DGM B Gopikrishnan, assistant manager S Yadav and others were present.