A woman is dead and another is missing and feared dead after the boat in which they were travelling ‘backtrack’ from Corriverton to Suriname capsized yesterday morning in the Corentyne River.
The body of Ashrani Hardat, known as ‘Buck’ of Annandale, East Coast Demerara, was found floating in the Corentyne River aback of Number 65 Village around 3 pm yesterday by fishermen. Another passenger, Cheryl Peters of 335 Mocha Arcadia, East Bank Demerara, is missing and feared dead.
Seven other passengers in the speedboat were rescued by other boats.
According to reports the boat, belonging to a Surinamese known only as “Amit” left ‘Aunty’s Boat Landing’ at Number 78 Village, Corriverton just after 5.15 am yesterday with nine passengers on board heading for Nickerie, Suriname. Shortly after it set off, however, the boat became entangled with a fishing seine, reports said.
Quick thinking by Hardat’s daughter Samantha Mohan, 26, who survived the mishap, led to the other speedboats going to their rescue some 15 minutes later.
Mohan told Stabroek News at Corriverton that after the boat started taking in water, she used her cellular phone to call the luggage boy at the landing but did not get through. She then telephoned the minibus driver called “Dougla”, who had taken her and her mother to Corriverton from Annandale earlier in the morning, and told him of the accident. She said that before she was finished talking to him, the boat went down and she started screaming.
Mohan said she and her mother as well as another woman and her two children held onto a bag containing cigarettes and were floating in the water until help came. The other passengers held onto other objects in the water, as well.
She said that as she tried to get into the rescue boat, she saw a black bag being pulled over her head. “I held onto my mother but a man pulled me in the boat and my mother slipped away from my grip and the strong current from the water pulled her under the boat.”
Mohan said she kept screaming that her mother had gone under the boat but persons could not find her.
According to Mohan, before the boat left Corriverton her mother kept asking for a lifejacket but none was given to her. None of the other passengers had lifejackets, she said.
The captain who is now in the custody of police in Suriname had left in a hurry.
Fezal Mursaline, who owns the landing with his mother Shameerah “Aunty” Khatoon, told this newspaper that he was on the landing with “Dougla,” when Mohan’s telephone call came through. He said he immediately sent out the captains with his three speedboats in search of the passengers.
Mursaline, who also engages in the trade of transporting passengers through the “backtrack” system said since the captains were not sure exactly where the boat was, they ventured out in different directions until they found the passengers. He said had it not been for the phone call from Mohan the incident could have been more tragic.
Khatoon said she took the passengers to her home in front of the landing and gave them tea and bought clothing and footwear for them. She also gave money to four of passengers from Suriname to go back home.
While this newspaper was speaking to Mohan at Corriverton yesterday she was feeling nauseous and was constantly vomiting the water she had swallowed in the river.
One rescuer who was waiting on a speedboat to go to Suriname when he heard of the incident said he pulled the passengers to safety by “buckling my foot on the boat seat and pulling them out.” He said some of the passengers were panicking and screaming continuously.
The man said that the accident was as a result of carelessness and could have been avoided. An experienced captain himself, he said all the captain had to do was to clip the seine to release the boat.
Peters, the co-owner of a shop at Mocha, is a mother of five.
She has been a trader for sometime now and has been making the dangerous trip twice a week to purchase watches and clothing. Her relatives said that in recent times she had indicated that watches were the items selling and she left her home at around 1 am yesterday morning to travel to Suriname. Her niece said that the woman was expected back in Mocha at around 11 am the same day as a relative of hers was expected to fly out to Trinidad later in the day with the watches. Instead she received a call from the driver of the bus the woman left with informing her that there was a boat accident and she was missing.
When Stabroek News visited the woman’s home yesterday her relatives and friends were gathered at a shop opposite her home as phone calls were coming to the shop. Some were crying while others were praying that the woman would turn up alive while yet another set had concluded that the woman was dead.
The woman’s father, Claude Peters, heard the news at work and when he returned home and it was confirmed he collapsed. Relatives said that years ago the man lost his only son Emerson Peters called ‘Emmo’ to the sea. The young man had gone to sea on a boat and never returned.
