T&T deploys air and sea crews to Guyana

Jesse Ramdeo & Kevon Felmine

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar says Trinidad and To­ba­go has al­ready be­gun pro­vid­ing as­sis­tance to Guyana, fol­low­ing the dead­ly cap­siz­ing of the MV Bari­ma pas­sen­ger fer­ry off that coun­try’s coast.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar yes­ter­day said T&T had al­ready mo­bilised mil­i­tary re­sources to sup­port the search op­er­a­tion.

“The Coast Guard is de­ploy­ing TTS SPEY­SIDE (CG 25) with a crew of 20 per­sons plus an ad­di­tion­al sev­en divers,” the Prime Min­is­ter said.

“The Air Guard has al­ready de­ployed a C26 air­craft with a crew of four to as­sist in aer­i­al search­es.”

The de­ploy­ment forms part of T&T’s re­gion­al hu­man­i­tar­i­an re­sponse, with the Coast Guard ves­sel and Air Guard air­craft ex­pect­ed to bol­ster on­go­ing search-and-res­cue ef­forts as Guyanese au­thor­i­ties con­tin­ue the op­er­a­tion in hopes of lo­cat­ing the re­main­ing miss­ing pas­sen­gers.

The an­nounce­ment came yes­ter­day as Guyanese au­thor­i­ties con­firmed that 27 bod­ies, among them four chil­dren, had been re­cov­ered af­ter the MV Bari­ma over­turned late on Sat­ur­day while trav­el­ling from George­town to the north­west­ern com­mu­ni­ty of Port Kai­tu­ma with 179 peo­ple on board. Some 83 peo­ple are still miss­ing while 69 peo­ple have so far been re­cov­ered in the search and res­cue mis­sion.

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

“The lat­est re­port sug­gests an ad­di­tion­al 83 per­sons are still to be found. They are deemed miss­ing and still to be found. Again, this is a search and res­cue op­er­a­tion. It re­mains a search and res­cue op­er­a­tion,” Phillips said.

“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 he had been told the ves­sel may have pock­ets of air where peo­ple could sur­vive for a few days.

Phillips said the gov­ern­ment of France, through the French Armed Forces, had pro­vid­ed ad­di­tion­al crit­i­cal sup­port with the de­ploy­ment of 15 divers, who joined the lo­cal dive teams at the con­firmed ves­sel site. He said ad­di­tion­al search and dive ca­pa­bil­i­ties were of­fered by the T&T Gov­ern­ment.

Phillips said fam­i­ly mem­bers will sub­se­quent­ly be in­vit­ed to un­der­take iden­ti­fi­ca­tion pro­ce­dures at the So­di Hos­pi­tal and that the gov­ern­ment is pro­vid­ing air trans­port to some vil­lagers to help iden­ti­fy and re­trieve bod­ies.

The MV Bari­ma was a vi­tal trans­porta­tion link for res­i­dents of Guyana’s Re­gion One, where com­mu­ni­ties re­ly heav­i­ly on mar­itime trav­el to reach George­town for busi­ness, ser­vices and sup­plies.

Op­po­si­tion Leader Azrud­din Mo­hamed, speak­ing to CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew from the search area yes­ter­day, said the ves­sel was fre­quent­ly used be­cause of the cost dif­fer­ence be­tween sea and air trav­el.

“Per­sons liv­ing in Re­gion 1 would use the ves­sel to save on trans­porta­tion costs, be­cause it is very cost­ly to use planes to go to Re­gion 1,” Mo­hamed said.

The tragedy has al­so raised ques­tions about pas­sen­ger records, af­ter Guyanese au­thor­i­ties re­port­ed dis­crep­an­cies in­volv­ing the ves­sel’s man­i­fest.

CMC re­port­ed that Guyana’s Pub­lic Works Min­is­ter Bish­op Juan Edghill re­ject­ed claims that the ves­sel was un­sea­wor­thy, say­ing it was op­er­at­ing with­in its rou­tine main­te­nance sched­ule and was due for planned dry dock­ing lat­er this year.

Ac­cord­ing to Kai­eteur News, Edghill al­so said an in­ves­ti­ga­tion found dis­par­i­ties be­tween the of­fi­cial man­i­fest and the num­ber of peo­ple res­cued, with 35 of the 69 sur­vivors not list­ed on the doc­u­ment.

Mo­hamed al­so raised con­cerns about the op­er­a­tion, al­leg­ing that the ves­sel may have been car­ry­ing more peo­ple and car­go than it could safe­ly ac­com­mo­date. Those claims have not been in­de­pen­dent­ly ver­i­fied.

Guyana’s au­thor­i­ties con­tin­ue to in­ves­ti­gate the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the in­ci­dent, in­clud­ing the ves­sel’s op­er­a­tions and the events lead­ing up to the tragedy.

In a state­ment yes­ter­day, the Guyana gov­ern­ment said the ves­sel’s lo­ca­tion was iden­ti­fied at 1.31 pm, fol­low­ing ef­forts by mul­ti­ple stake­hold­ers, in­clud­ing lo­cal fish­er­folk and the pri­vate­ly owned ves­sel Gilli­gan Is­land.

Au­thor­i­ties said re­cov­ered bod­ies will be tak­en to Char­i­ty for pro­cess­ing by health and po­lice of­fi­cials, while rel­a­tives will be in­vit­ed to iden­ti­fy them at Sud­die Hos­pi­tal.

Pres­i­dent Ir­faan Ali vis­it­ed Mabaru­ma in Re­gion One, where, ac­cord­ing to the Of­fice of the Pres­i­dent, he met res­cued pas­sen­gers and rel­a­tives of those af­fect­ed by the tragedy, while al­so vis­it­ing sur­vivors re­ceiv­ing med­ical treat­ment at Mabaru­ma Hos­pi­tal.

“We will con­tin­ue to work close­ly with every af­fect­ed fam­i­ly, pro­vid­ing the nec­es­sary sup­port and as­sis­tance dur­ing this dif­fi­cult pe­ri­od,” Ali said.

Emer­gency Fam­i­ly As­sis­tance Cen­tres have al­so been es­tab­lished at lo­ca­tions, in­clud­ing the Port Kai­tu­ma Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre, the NAREI Ex­ten­sion Cen­tre at Ku­ma­ka, Mabaru­ma, and the Umana Yana in Kingston, George­town.