If it will indeed take six months for the Commission of Inquiry into the catastrophic loss of 100 lives in the sinking of the MV Barima to wrap up its findings, it means that contemporaneous action has to be taken on important revelations from the hearings to improve safety on other vessels in the T&HD fleet.
On the first day of formal hearings at the Arthur Chung Conference Centre a disclosure was made about the beacon which was aboard the MV Barima on the night that it sank. In an interview with Kiskadee Watch on Saturday, Director of Air Navigation Services at the Guyana Civil Aviation Authority, Rickford Samaroo explained that while the beacon on the MV Barima was registered in the United States, its identifying information was not entered into the specific international database accessible to personnel processing distress alerts.
On the night of the tragedy, this left operators without the information needed to immediately establish which vessel was in distress. The international beacon registration database is operated through the United States Mission Control Centre (USMCC) system and allows authorised users around the world to search for a beacon using its unique hexadecimal identification code, known as its Hex ID.
When the relevant information is entered into the database, a search can reveal who the beacon belongs to, the vessel or person associated with it and the relevant contact information. However, Mr Samaroo said that when a beacon’s information is absent from that database, a person searching its identification code cannot retrieve those details, even if the beacon has been registered with another authority.
Mr Samaroo had told the commission that distress alerts normally reach Timehri within three to five minutes of detection and generally contain detailed information.
When a maritime distress alert is received, personnel at the control tower check the beacon’s registration, establish its location by plotting the coordinates and relay the information to the relevant agencies, including the Guyana Defence Force Coast Guard and the lighthouse.
During the MV Barima emergency, however, the absence of identifying information in the database meant personnel could not use the beacon’s Hex ID to immediately establish the vessel’s identity and retrieve its ownership and contact details. The beacon nevertheless transmitted a distress signal, which prompted the search-and-rescue response.
Mr Samaroo told Kiskadee Watch the responsibility for registering a beacon in the international database rests with the person or operator who purchases it and intends to use it, explaining that the registration information is important because it allows responding authorities to identify who is in distress and determine whom they need to assist.
When questioned about who should have ensured that the MV Barima’s beacon was properly registered, Mr Samaroo said that if the beacon was installed on and being used by the vessel, the operator would have been responsible for ensuring that its information was entered into the database.
Mr Samaroo said he was unsure whether the Maritime Administration Department (MARAD) had regulations specifically requiring maritime beacon operators to enter their information into the international database. He said that in aviation, regulations require aircraft owners and operators to provide the relevant registration information before using such equipment.
Surely it would have been the intention of MARAD and other maritime bodies to have the beacon’s particulars for the MV Barima entered into this US database to ensure a swift and scaled response to a tragedy such as occurred on July 18th. The urgency of this appears to have escaped those at MARAD, the Transport and Harbours Department (T&HD), the Ministry of Public Works and the Ministry of Public Utilities. Who at MARAD and the T&HD should take responsibility for this? Has action been immediately taken to ensure that ferries like MV Ma Lisha have the requisite type of beacon with the required information entered into this pivotal database?
Another area of major concern is the sloth surrounding the salvaging of the MV Barima and the fact that the contract was awarded to BK International which is not known to have had a track record as a salvager. It is now three months since the sinking and the salvage has not been accomplished and to make matters worse it isn’t known when the selected company will begin work. An attempt on Saturday by Kiskadee Watch to elicit information from BK at its Ogle office ended in failure. Is BK prepared to immediately begin work? Does it have the requisite equipment and personnel? What is the timeframe for its work? What contingency measures are in place to retrieve evidence if the salvaging fails? There is little confidence in the process that resulted in the selection of BK and the continued silence and inaction is troubling. Hopefully the Commission of Inquiry will transmit to the authorities the need for urgency in the recovery of the ferry.
Discussion