Dubai, Aug 6: An Indian MP from Kerala has called for the resumption of a shipping service between Bahrain and India for the benefit of low-paid Indian workers in that Gulf country.

Pannyan Ravindran of the Communist Party of India (CPI) has said that he will submit a petition signed by 20 MPs from Kerala to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh seeking resumption of the services, according to a report in the Gulf Daily News newspaper.

Ravindran, according to the report, has said that the shipping services were necessary as the present airfares between India and Bahrain are almost the same as those on the India-Europe sector, which the low-paid workers cannot afford.

Though a passenger ferry service was launched between the Gulf and India in 2001 by a Bahraini firm, it had to be subsequently cancelled as the vessel could not get a sea-worthiness certificate from India's Mercantile and Marine Department.

According to the report, Ravindran's call comes close on the heels of a similar appeal by the Bahrain Malayalee Business Forum (BMBF) which had said that the fares charged by India's national carriers, Air India and Indian, were too steep.

However, some feel that such a service is not practical.

"A major drawback of the shipping service is that a person going on a month's leave to India will waste two weeks just for travel," Ram Manohar, travel and tours manager of the Bahrain Tourism Company, told the newspaper.

Another travel company executive was quoted as saying that if the purpose is to save on airfares of the Indian carriers, a ticket of Air Arabia would not be much different from that of a ticket paid to travel by ship.

In 2003, a feasibility study to resume the ferry service from Bahrain to Kerala was done by Bahrain's Centre for Marine Studies. But it was put on hold following the Iraq war and rise in fuel prices, the report said.

There are over 130,000 Indians in Bahrain, many of whom work as contract labourers.