Guyana tragedy: Search continues for missing persons from MV Barima

The Guyana gov­ern­ment says the po­lice are con­duct­ing “ a com­pre­hen­sive in­ves­ti­ga­tion” in­to the cir­cum­stances that led to the MV Bari­ma cap­siz­ing last Sat­ur­day night, re­sult­ing so far in the deaths of 27 peo­ple and the res­cue of 69 oth­ers.

The au­thor­i­ties say the search con­tin­ues for the es­ti­mat­ed 70 peo­ple still un­ac­count­ed for af­ter the 87-year-old ves­sel sank as it made its way from George­town to Port Kai­tu­ma, a small vil­lage with­in the Bari­ma-Wai­ni ad­min­is­tra­tive re­gion of the coun­try.

Prime Min­is­ter Mark Phillips told a news con­fer­ence on Mon­day night that de­spite the of­fi­cial man­i­fest in­di­cat­ing that 116 pas­sen­gers and a crew of 17 had been on board the ves­sel, the au­thor­i­ties be­lieve that 179 peo­ple in­clud­ing the crew mem­bers were on the ves­sel when it cap­sized af­ter be­ing hit by a large wave.

“Notwith­stand­ing the fact that we are re­cov­er­ing bod­ies, we still have hope that peo­ple are out there who are alive, and there­fore we con­tin­ue our search and res­cue ac­tiv­i­ties,” Phillips said, adding that he has been told that the ves­sel may have pock­ets of air where peo­ple could sur­vive for a few days.

In a state­ment, the Min­istry of Home Af­fairs said that the Guyana Po­lice Force (GPF) is con­duct­ing the in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the tragedy and is en­cour­ag­ing “any­one with first­hand in­for­ma­tion, pho­tographs, videos, or any oth­er ev­i­dence that may as­sist in­ves­ti­ga­tors to come for­ward and pro­vide that ma­te­r­i­al di­rect­ly to the Guyana Po­lice Force.

“The co­op­er­a­tion of the pub­lic is vi­tal to en­sur­ing that the in­ves­ti­ga­tion is thor­ough and that all rel­e­vant facts are es­tab­lished,” the min­istry said.

But the of the mi­nor­i­ty op­po­si­tion For­ward Guyana Move­ment (FGM), Aman­za Wal­ton has called on the gov­ern­ment to im­me­di­ate­ly com­mis­sion an in­de­pen­dent ma­rine ca­su­al­ty in­ves­ti­ga­tion in ac­cor­dance with the In­ter­na­tion­al Mar­itime Or­ga­ni­za­tion’s Ca­su­al­ty In­ves­ti­ga­tion Code.

Wal­ton, an op­po­si­tion leg­is­la­tor, who is al­so a spe­cial­ist mar­itime and avi­a­tion at­tor­ney, said the in­ves­ti­ga­tion must not stop at the bridge of the ves­sel, but must fol­low the ev­i­dence through every link in the chain of cau­sa­tion.

In a state­ment she said a com­pre­hen­sive in­ves­ti­ga­tion must al­so ex­am­ine the con­di­tion and sea­wor­thi­ness of the MV Bari­ma, its main­te­nance his­to­ry, in­spec­tion records, reg­u­la­to­ry over­sight, op­er­a­tional poli­cies, pro­cure­ment de­ci­sions, emer­gency pre­pared­ness, in­fra­struc­ture, min­is­te­r­i­al over­sight where rel­e­vant, and every in­sti­tu­tion­al de­ci­sion that may have con­tributed to this tragedy.

“The Gov­ern­ment is not mere­ly free to con­duct this kind of in­ves­ti­ga­tion. It is bound to. Guyana is a Con­tract­ing Gov­ern­ment to SO­LAS, the In­ter­na­tion­al Con­ven­tion for the Safe­ty of Life at Sea, and since 2010 SO­LAS has made it manda­to­ry to in­ves­ti­gate any ca­su­al­ty of this kind, one in­volv­ing the to­tal loss of a ves­sel or loss of life.

“This is not a dis­cre­tionary cour­tesy that the Gov­ern­ment may ex­tend or with­hold. It is a treaty oblig­a­tion. And that in­ves­ti­ga­tion must be in­de­pen­dent of any crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ing, be­cause the two serve en­tire­ly dif­fer­ent pur­pos­es. Any­thing less places Guyana in breach of its own in­ter­na­tion­al oblig­a­tions,” Wal­ton said.

In its state­ment, the Min­istry of Home Af­fairs said that it is “deeply con­cerned” by the cir­cu­la­tion on so­cial me­dia of old, fab­ri­cat­ed, and un­re­lat­ed videos and pho­tographs that are be­ing false­ly linked to the tragedy.

“The de­lib­er­ate spread of mis­in­for­ma­tion at a time of na­tion­al grief is not on­ly in­sen­si­tive and deeply hurt­ful to the fam­i­lies who are mourn­ing, but al­so has the po­ten­tial to im­pede on­go­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions, cre­ate un­nec­es­sary fear, and mis­lead the pub­lic.

“Let it be clear: any­one who know­ing­ly cre­ates, shares, or re­pub­lish­es false or mis­lead­ing con­tent pur­port­ing to de­pict or re­late to this tragedy may be com­mit­ting of­fences un­der the laws of Guyana. Such acts of pub­lic mis­chief and any oth­er ap­plic­a­ble of­fences will be in­ves­ti­gat­ed, and where the ev­i­dence sup­ports it, those re­spon­si­ble will face the full force of the law.”

The min­istry said that it ther­fore urg­ing “all cit­i­zens to act re­spon­si­bly, ver­i­fy in­for­ma­tion be­fore shar­ing it, and al­low the in­ves­tiga­tive process to pro­ceed with­out in­ter­fer­ence.

“This is a time for com­pas­sion, truth, and na­tion­al sol­i­dar­i­ty. We ask that every­one re­spect the dig­ni­ty of the vic­tims and their fam­i­lies and re­frain from con­tribut­ing to the spread of false in­for­ma­tion.”

Wal­ton said that cit­i­zens must re­ject every ef­fort to re­duce the na­tion­al tragedy to a crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion of the crew. She said the is­sue can­not be­gin and end with the crew mem­bers who were on­board the ves­sel.

The ves­sel’s cap­tain and first en­gi­neer have been ar­rest­ed af­ter both test­ed pos­i­tive for nar­cotics.

A gov­ern­ment state­ment Mon­day said that the en­tire man­age­ment team re­spon­si­ble for the load­ing, dis­patch, and over­all man­age­ment of the MV Bari­ma has been sent off from du­ty so as to guar­an­tee the “ab­solute in­tegri­ty” of the up­com­ing in­quiry.

But Wal­ton said that the re­al sto­ry of the tragedy be­gan years ear­li­er with de­ci­sions that were not tak­en, re­pairs that were iden­ti­fied but nev­er com­plet­ed, re­place­ment ves­sels that did not re­place, projects that were an­nounced but nev­er fin­ished, in­fra­struc­ture that re­mained in­com­plete, and an eighty-sev­en-year-old pub­lic fer­ry that con­tin­ued car­ry­ing the peo­ple of Re­gion One long af­ter the Gov­ern­ment it­self had ac­knowl­edged the need for change.

“If the in­tegri­ty of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion re­quired the re­moval of pub­lic ser­vants, it equal­ly re­quires the re­moval of the Min­is­ter with di­rect po­lit­i­cal re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for that De­part­ment. Ac­count­abil­i­ty can­not have one stan­dard for pub­lic ser­vants and an­oth­er for Min­is­ters,” Wal­ton added.

Pub­lic Works MIn­is­ter Juan Edghill clar­i­fy­ing what he de­scribed as mis­in­for­ma­tion re­gard­ing the cause of the in­ci­dent, said “there was no en­gine prob­lem or any me­chan­i­cal prob­lem.

“Even the sur­vivors who made videos from the hos­pi­tal, they’re telling you what hap­pened, and it had noth­ing to do with over­load, or tak­ing in wa­ter. It had to do with the tide. Please be ad­vised that the MV Bari­ma is li­censed to car­ry 284 tonnes of car­go. The car­go man­i­fest shows that we had 268 tonnes, way be­low the car­go load.

“Sec­ond­ly, the MV Bari­ma is li­censed to car­ry 397 pas­sen­gers and we on­ly had 116 pas­sen­gers on board. The mis­in­for­ma­tion of over­load­ing as the cause of this in­ci­dent must be dealt with for what it is. Mis­in­for­ma­tion and some­thing to cre­ate pan­ic and pub­lic mis­chief and we de­ny that in the very strongest terms,” Edghill added.

But Wal­ton said that Edghill has pub­licly pro­nounced up­on mat­ters that lie at the heart of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

She said he had ear­li­er cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly de­nied that the MV Bari­ma was not over­loaded with ei­ther car­go or pas­sen­gers.

“Lat­er, he ad­vanced a dif­fer­ent po­si­tion, sug­gest­ing that over­load­ing had oc­curred and al­leg­ing crim­i­nal con­duct. Those were de­fin­i­tive and con­tra­dic­to­ry pub­lic state­ments on is­sues that an in­de­pen­dent ma­rine ca­su­al­ty in­ves­ti­ga­tion must de­ter­mine,” Wal­ton said, adding that a Min­is­ter can­not pub­licly pro­nounce up­on the very mat­ters that an in­de­pen­dent in­ves­ti­ga­tion is re­quired to ex­am­ine and then re­main in of­fice while that in­ves­ti­ga­tion pro­ceeds. —GEORGE­TOWN, Guyana (CMC)