Guyana President to announce international Commission of Inquiry into ferry disaster

Guyana's Pres­i­dent Dr Mo­hamed Ir­faan Ali says an in­ter­na­tion­al and in­de­pen­dent Com­mis­sion of In­quiry will be es­tab­lished to in­ves­ti­gate the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the cap­siz­ing of the fer­ry, the MV Bari­ma.

In a state­ment on Sat­ur­day, the Pres­i­dent said the five-mem­ber pan­el to be an­nounced on Sun­day would com­prise “dis­tin­guished ex­perts and pro­fes­sion­als” with ex­ten­sive ex­pe­ri­ence in law, ma­rine en­gi­neer­ing, mar­itime safe­ty and dis­as­ter in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

He said the mem­bers had been se­lect­ed for their in­de­pen­dence, tech­ni­cal ex­per­tise and proven abil­i­ty, and would de­ter­mine their own pro­ce­dures and meth­ods of work.

The Com­mis­sion will be man­dat­ed to con­duct what the Pres­i­dent de­scribed as a “thor­ough, im­par­tial ex­am­i­na­tion” of the dis­as­ter, in­clud­ing the events lead­ing to the ves­sel’s cap­siz­ing and sink­ing, the emer­gency re­sponse, and all re­lat­ed mat­ters.

Its in­ves­ti­ga­tion will seek to iden­ti­fy any short­com­ings or fail­ures, rec­om­mend ac­count­abil­i­ty where ap­pro­pri­ate, and pro­pose re­forms to im­prove the safe­ty and re­li­a­bil­i­ty of Guyana’s mar­itime trans­port sys­tem.

Among the is­sues to be ex­am­ined are the ves­sel’s load­ing, pas­sen­ger board­ing pro­ce­dures, con­di­tions on board, sea­wor­thi­ness and main­te­nance his­to­ry, com­pli­ance with mar­itime laws and safe­ty stan­dards, the con­duct and com­pe­tence of the mas­ter and crew, pas­sen­ger man­age­ment, life-sav­ing arrange­ments, and the im­pact of weath­er, sea con­di­tions and oth­er op­er­a­tional fac­tors.

The Com­mis­sion will al­so re­view the search, res­cue and re­cov­ery op­er­a­tion, as­sess­ing the ad­e­qua­cy, co­or­di­na­tion and ef­fec­tive­ness of the re­sponse by all agen­cies and stake­hold­ers in­volved.

Ali said the in­quiry would have the au­thor­i­ty to de­ter­mine whether neg­li­gence, mis­con­duct, dere­lic­tion of du­ty or in­sti­tu­tion­al fail­ures con­tributed to the tragedy, and to rec­om­mend any leg­isla­tive, reg­u­la­to­ry, in­sti­tu­tion­al or op­er­a­tional re­forms need­ed to pre­vent a sim­i­lar dis­as­ter in the fu­ture.

The an­nounce­ment fol­lows the sink­ing of the MV Bari­ma, one of the dead­liest mar­itime dis­as­ters in Guyana’s his­to­ry, which claimed dozens of lives and prompt­ed calls for a full in­de­pen­dent in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

The Pres­i­dent had pre­vi­ous­ly com­mit­ted to es­tab­lish­ing an in­ter­na­tion­al Com­mis­sion of In­quiry once the search and re­cov­ery phase of the op­er­a­tion had pro­gressed. —GEORGE­TOWN, Guyana (CMC)