A protest march leading to the transport ministry offices in Tórshavn will take place today as locals are fed up with unstable ferry connections to the smaller islands, reports Kvf.fo.
For several weeks, Strandfaraskip Landsins (the national transport company in the Faroe Islands) has had to reorganize the ferry schedule to the outlying islands due to drawn-out repair works on one of the ferries, ‘Ternan’.
As a consequence of this, the ferry service to Nólsoy is now being operated by ‘Sildberin’ and the service to Skúvoy by ‘Súlan’. ‘Sam’ does a few weekly cargo trips to Nólsoy, but none of these services are adequate, according to the locals, who say these ferries are not only small but also “desperately out-of-date”.
“We’ve managed to create a pretty decent tourism industry in Nólsoy, and we know that many tourists have now cancelled their trips to the island due to the unreliable ferry services,” say Maud Wang Hansen and Vígdis Bjarnadóttir, the organizers of the protest march, who both live in Nólsoy – which under normal circumstances is a 25-minute ferry ride away from Tórshavn.
The protest organizers’ main demands are that Strandfaraskip Landsins are given a higher political prioritization, that a suitable replacement ferry is provided and that efforts to renew the fleet of “outdated” ferries are taken more seriously, writes Kvf.fo.
