In due course the full scale of the national disaster that befell the country yesterday with the capsizing of the MV Barima will be known.
Until then, all of the combined energies of the state, the people, the private sector and the international community must be deployed to find those who have not been accounted for. Survivors also have to be restored to their abodes and counselled.
At the moment, the authorities are unable to say definitively how many people are missing and feared dead. Sixty-seven persons have been saved out of what had been believed to be 133 persons including 17 crew. That figure can no longer apply as only 35 of the 67 persons rescued were on the manifest. It means that 32 persons got onto the vessel without being registered and it is likely that others were also on without being counted. Even if those on board amounted to 133 it would mean that 66 persons are missing, an unimaginable tragedy in the making.
The accounts of survivors lend muscle to reports and concerns that the ferry was overloaded both in terms of the people it carried and cargo. There were multiple testimonies of densely packed boxes which given their likely weight could have compounded the plight of the vessel when a rogue wave struck it.
Adding to the.tragic circumstances was the admission by the authorities that the captain and at least one other crew member had tested positive for a narcotic substance. Other accounts from survivors have spoken about crew members imbibing alcohol and conducting themselves in an unprofessional manner. This was a journey in rough waters that was a disaster waiting to happen and dozens of persons might now have died.
Whenever President Ali returns to the jurisdiction having left without explanation his first mandate will be to do his utmost to find survivors. The second will be setting in train a Commission of Inquiry into the circumstances leading to the deadliest disaster in the country’s post independence history aside from Jonestown.
Saturday night’s capsizing has laid bare the farce that President Ali’s government has presided over post-2020. Despite the profligate expenditure of billions and consecutive years of trillion-dollar budgets we are no better off today in many of the fundamentally important things like riverain and ocean-going traffic for example.
An 87-year-old vessel transported an unknown number of passengers with a cargo load that several survivors said was excessive and which saw them being pinned as they tried to flee. The point at which the capsizing occurred is known for its wicked currents and frightening waves. Why in the six years of the Ali administration was this vessel not decommissioned and replaced? The acquisition of a vessel from India for the northwest run had been found to be inadequate for the expanded traffic to the region. This left MV Barima and other vessels having to take up the slack despite their age and unreliability.
If the Transport and Harbours Department is unable to definitively say how many people were on board the vessel it means it is presiding over a pappyshow and this must have been a daily feature. Over six years of the Ali administration and this is the state of affairs? A ministry of efficiency supposedly exists but we are rolling backwards and under the water.
How does the captain of your vessel on a night journey in treacherous waters fall under the influence of a narcotic along with other members of the crew? What type of standard has been invoked by the maritime agency? Is there regular testing of personnel on board? Particularly in light of claims that routinely come from travellers about the conduct of crew members on these runs.
What about search and rescue capacity which has been raised ad nauseam for years? Can President Ali today say how many helicopters and rescue craft were immediately over and on the water in search of victims after the capsizing? Were the helicopters available to the state working? How long was it from the point of capsizing until the first rescue was effected? Is ExxonMobil part of the search and rescue infrastructure of the country no doubt utilizing cost oil to finance its activities? Where are our divers? How equipped is the Civil Defence Commission for this task? The point is that for all of the money taken in from oil and the extravagant expenditure on infrastructure and lavish banqueting at State House, the country is still marooned somewhere in the past with deadly consequences as we have observed in this case.
A credible Commission of Inquiry is needed. Not the whitewashing that was engineered as it relates to the deaths of 20 children in the Mahdia dormitory fire in 2023. While the power to convene a Commission of Inquiry resides with the President and he is ever keen to employ his authority, perhaps in this instance he might consider the wisdom of having bipartisan input from Parliament on what should be done particularly as his own record in these matters will come under scrutiny. The horror of July 18 must result in accountability and assured change for the better.
Discussion