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No toilets at Colombo Port for luxury cruise liner tourists
View(s):The Colombo Port has no toilet facilities for the thousands of tourists who are increasingly calling over on luxury cruise liners.
There are only two lavatories located in a decrepit “passenger terminal” on Queen Elizabeth Quay which was built in the early 1950s for the visit of Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh. The edifice is now abandoned and the toilets are
sometimes used by female vendors who sell souvenirs nearby, port sources said.
But there are no washrooms for tourists. “Most of them disembark from the vessel and do sightseeing,” one source said. “Some go on day trips to places like Kandy and when they come to the Port they want to use the facilities. When they find that there are none, they have to go back on board the vessel but it could take some time to complete procedures.”
Ports like those in Singapore have modern washrooms for use by passengers and others. They have proper terminals for travellers on cruise ships. In Sri Lanka–which is seeing a steep rise in the number of liners calling at Colombo Port–however, even the immigration posts are temporary.
The massive vessels, each carrying thousands of people, typically dock at QEQ, sometime at the East Container Terminal, or the Jaya Container Terminal. None of them has toilets suitable for use by visitors. Between February and March this year, 10 cruise liners have called at the Colombo Port. Twenty-five more are scheduled to visit during the rest of the year.
Some of the liners that have called over are Aegean Odyssey, MV the World, MV Pacific Princess and MV Arcadia. In the first ten months of last year alone, Sri Lanka recorded a 29 percent growth in luxury cruise ships calling at the Port of Colombo.