After staging a 10-day protest pletna boatmen will once again be taking tourists to the Bled Island. Last night they reached a deal on the new regime of navigation on the lake with the municipality’s representatives and councilors.

The new regime introduces a regular line with a defined timetable of departures. 23 pletna boatmen will pay a fee of 5.000 euros a year, reports Radio Slovenija. At the same time the municipality is to invest 100.000 in the lake’s coast.

The dispute between the pletna boatmen and the Bled parish priest Janez Ferkolj broke out because of a new parish boat which started taking passengers to the island on April 1st. Under the new agreement, starting on May 1st, the parish boat will no longer be used for commercial purposes.

The pletna boatmen all about tradition and ancestry
"We think it was a planned and unethical attempt to take over our work, which is based on a long tradition and cultural heritage passed on to us by our ancestors. The electric parish boat cannot compare to the traditional Bled pletna boat and it cannot advertise itself under that name," is what the boatmen stressed last week, when they accused the parish priest of his inappropriate business initiative and disloyal competition.

The priest wished to take tourists to the island with his own electric boat with a defined timetable and for a considerably lower price: eight euros per person instead of the fourteen euros charged by the pletna boatmen. According to the new deal regular lines will be introduced because the municipality was bothered by the fact the sometimes there were no pletna boats available for the guests. However the pletna boatmen will be in charge of the complete water transport on the lake.

Ten-day conflict
The Bled parish priest started transporting passengers with the Sinaj boat, which has all the necessary permits, on April 1st. That is when the so-called "pletna war" began. In protest the pletna boatmen then tugged the Sinaj boat ashore and also pulled all their boats off the lake. Representatives of Bled’s tourism sector called for the immediate resolution of the dispute, as the situation also effected the town’s tourist activities and income.