Guyana swears in Commission of Inquiry into deadly MV Barima ferry disaster

Guyana of­fi­cial­ly swore in a five-mem­ber Com­mis­sion of In­quiry on Thurs­day, to in­ves­ti­gate the sink­ing of the MV Bari­ma ear­li­er this month, a mar­itime dis­as­ter that is be­lieved to have claimed the lives of more than 100 peo­ple.

Pres­i­dent Ir­faan Ali, who ap­point­ed the com­mis­sion­ers, at­tend­ed the swear­ing-in cer­e­mo­ny be­fore Guyana’s Chief Jus­tice Judy Latch­man.

The com­mis­sion’s chair­man, Jus­tice God­frey Philip Smith of Be­lize, took the oath of of­fice vir­tu­al­ly. A sec­re­tary to the com­mis­sion has not yet been ap­point­ed.

Ad­dress­ing the com­mis­sion­ers, Pres­i­dent Ali un­der­scored the pan­el’s in­de­pen­dence and ex­per­tise, de­scrib­ing it as one that “meets the high­est bench­marks of in­de­pen­dence, im­par­tial­i­ty, and ob­jec­tiv­i­ty.”

He said the in­quiry is in­tend­ed to pro­vide the coun­try with a full and im­par­tial ac­count of the tragedy and to en­sure that sim­i­lar dis­as­ters are pre­vent­ed in the fu­ture.

“Guyana de­serves a full, fair, and im­par­tial ac­count of what oc­curred and why it oc­curred,” Ali said, pledg­ing the gov­ern­ment’s full sup­port for the com­mis­sion.

“I wish to as­sure you that the Gov­ern­ment will pro­vide the Com­mis­sion with the ad­min­is­tra­tive, tech­ni­cal, fi­nan­cial, and lo­gis­ti­cal sup­port nec­es­sary for the ef­fec­tive dis­charge of its man­date. Every re­source re­quired to fa­cil­i­tate a thor­ough, pro­fes­sion­al, and in­de­pen­dent in­quiry will be made avail­able,” he added.

Un­der its broad terms of ref­er­ence, the com­mis­sion will es­tab­lish the facts sur­round­ing the sink­ing, ex­am­ine its caus­es and con­tribut­ing fac­tors, de­ter­mine whether mar­itime laws and op­er­a­tional stan­dards were fol­lowed, as­sess the ef­fec­tive­ness of the search, res­cue and re­cov­ery op­er­a­tions, iden­ti­fy any fail­ures or short­com­ings, and rec­om­mend re­forms to strength­en the coun­try’s mar­itime trans­porta­tion sys­tem.

“The na­tion awaits such re­port. The fam­i­lies who have suf­fered unimag­in­able loss await these an­swers,” the pres­i­dent said.

The MV Bari­ma was car­ry­ing an es­ti­mat­ed 179 pas­sen­gers and crew when it sank. Au­thor­i­ties re­cov­ered 72 bod­ies, res­cued 76 peo­ple and said 30 oth­ers re­main un­ac­count­ed for.

In the af­ter­math of the tragedy, the ves­sel’s cap­tain, chief mate and the Trans­port and Har­bours De­part­ment’s Goods Su­per­in­ten­dent were charged with mur­der. Prime Min­is­ter Mark Phillips has said he does not be­lieve there was any de­lib­er­ate in­ten­tion to kill those aboard the ves­sel.

The com­mis­sion com­pris­es Jus­tice God­frey Philip Smith of Be­lize, CARI­COM High-Lev­el Rep­re­sen­ta­tive for Law and Crim­i­nal Jus­tice and an ad hoc judge of the East­ern Caribbean Court of Ap­peal; Pol­ish naval ar­chi­tect and ma­rine en­gi­neer Dr. An­dre Jesse Anungs­ki, who has ad­vised on in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to sev­er­al ma­jor mar­itime dis­as­ters; Cap­tain Hama­da Fau­da, Se­nior Mar­itime Sur­vey­or and Com­pli­ance Au­di­tor with the Mar­itime Au­thor­i­ty of Ja­maica; Trinidad and To­ba­go at­tor­ney Nairi Dawn Al­fon­so, an ex­pert in ad­mi­ral­ty and mar­itime law; and re­tired Rear Ad­mi­ral Hay­den Pritchard of Trinidad and To­ba­go, who has decades of ex­pe­ri­ence in mar­itime op­er­a­tions and mar­itime se­cu­ri­ty. —GEORGE­TOWN, Guyana (CMC)