KVIG Informative

An 87-year-old ferry sailed with more passengers than its manifest recorded. The captain tested positive for marijuana. Guyana now counts 73 bodies and is still searching for dozens more.

The MV Barima, an 87-year-old state-owned ferry, capsized late Saturday, July 18, off the Essequibo coast while on its regular route between Georgetown, Guyana’s capital, and Port Kaituma, an Indigenous community in the country’s northwest. The official manifest listed 133 people aboard. Authorities now believe 179 were on the vessel: 116 passengers and 17 crew in the initial count, plus at least 32 rescued survivors who never appeared on the list.

As of July 24, six days after the sinking, divers had recovered 73 bodies. Seventy-six people were rescued alive. Dozens remain unaccounted for. Public Works Minister Juan Edghill called it the worst maritime disaster in Guyana’s recent history.

The Barima’s captain and at least one crew member tested positive for marijuana in medical exams administered after the rescue. Both remain in police custody as part of a criminal investigation. “We have zero tolerance for crew drinking or smoking while at work. For the captain to test positive, this is serious,” Edghill said.

Survivors told reporters the vessel was carrying more cargo and passengers than on any previous trip, with engines, vehicles, fuel containers and commercial goods packed below deck. Several said the ferry had engine trouble shortly after departure and that the crew attempted repairs at sea rather than turning back to port. Others said water began entering the hull and that the crew dismissed it as “normal.”

President Irfaan Ali announced Sunday, July 26, the formation of a five-member international commission with “widespread powers” to operate independently. It is chaired by Phillip Godfrey Smith, Belize’s former attorney general and CARICOM’s High-Level Representative for Law and Criminal Justice. Other members are Hamada Fouda, a maritime surveyor from Jamaica; Nyree Dawn Alfonso, a Trinidad and Tobago attorney specializing in admiralty and maritime law; Andrzej Jasionowski, a Polish naval architect; and retired Rear Admiral Hayden Pritchard of Trinidad and Tobago.

Ali said the commission will determine whether “acts of negligence, misconduct, dereliction of duty and other failures” by any individual, entity or institution contributed to the disaster, including the vessel’s maintenance history, sea conditions, and the functioning of navigation and communication equipment. The inquiry will also assess whether boarding procedures, cargo loading and the rescue response met existing regulations.

Local authorities have so far arrested three people, including the rescued captain. The government has also suspended the management team responsible for the Barima’s loading and dispatch while a parallel investigation proceeds involving police, the Guyana Defence Force Coast Guard and the Maritime Administration.

The Barima entered service in 1939, built by the Scottish shipyard Ferguson Brothers. For nearly nine decades it served as the state’s lifeline between Georgetown and remote northwestern communities with no road access. That dependence is exactly what now demands answers: the commission is tasked with recommending reforms so no passenger again boards a ferry that no one counted correctly and no one inspected in time.