By Alva Solomon and Sara Bharrat
North West ferry MV Kimbia was towed back to the capital last night—a day after mechanical problems left the vessel stranded in the Atlantic while en route to Region One.
Shortly after 9:30pm, the vessel docked at the Kingston wharf of the Transport and Harbours Department (T&HD), where angry relatives of the more than 100 passengers on board were awaiting their return since earlier in the day. At the wharf, scores of upset and exhausted passengers were making their way to the road in search of transportation. However, several others with nowhere to stay in the city opted to stay aboard the vessel.
Attempts to obtain a comment from Transport Minister Robeson Benn yesterday were unsuccessful but Stabroek News was told that the aged vessel developed a steering problem on Thursday evening around 8 pm, several hours after departing for Port Kumaka. Reports are that the steering shaft of the vessel cut as it passed the Anna Regina area in the Atlantic. The authorities were subsequently alerted. A tug, the Viking 3, was later dispatched to assist in towing the MV Kimbia back to the city.
Most of the passengers on board were children.
Food and water were the first things on the minds of the passengers who rushed off the MV Kimbia last night. It was one boat ride, many swore, they hoped to never endure again.
“You know where I slept? On de iron,” Paul George, 16, who was returning home after a short holiday with his aunt, told Stabroek News. The teen had been anxious to get back to his North West home and he boarded the vessel on Thursday, shortly after his aunt packed a few sandwiches in his bag and dropped him to the Kingston port. Several hours later, George recalled, he learnt from the adults around him that the vessel had a mechanical problem and “they were stranded at sea.” He was soon without food and although there is a canteen on board, the teen said he had not money to buy anything and was forced to endure hours of hunger. Many others were in the same position.
Water is usually provided free of cost on the MV Kimbia, one passenger said. However, on Thursday when she boarded the vessel there was only one bottle and it was soon empty. For most of yesterday said the woman, who declined to have her name published, she kept asking for water. “I couldn’t buy any…they didn’t provide any and you know what I had to do? I had to end up drinking dirty water from a black tank…it was that or fall down,” she said.
During the trip, she further said, many persons became ill and there was much vomiting. By 4pm yesterday, the lack of water was beginning to scare many passengers and the crew, she added, was not equipped to handle the situation.
Another passenger Hilary Margow, who was discharged from the Georgetown Public Hospital recently with a broken leg, left the vessel in great pain. Margow said he was travelling alone and because of his condition was unable to do anything for himself. “I hear everyone complaining about hunger and thirst and so and all I could do was sit right where I was and deal with my own quietly…right now my foot is worse and I am just happy to be alive,” he said.
Plastic bottles, food and other waste were strewn across the floor of the vessel last night. The few bins were overflowing with refuse and passengers expressed frustration at the fact that there was no place to dispose of their garbage for most of the hassling trip. During a short tour of the vessel, this newspaper observed that passengers were sleeping on the bare floor. “Listen I don’t want to stay on this boat but me and my children have nowhere else to do,” a frustrated mother explained. “You smell that? That is the urinal smelling like that…this is what me and my children have been smelling for more than a day now…urine, stale food and garbage.”
During the trip, another woman said, three persons collapsed. She believes that it was the heat, stench and thirst which contributed to this. She and many others expressed frustration at the poor health and safety condition aboard the MV Kimbia. “Let me tell you there is not even a nurse on board this boat…if you drop down here then you’re on your own,” the woman said.
Although many passengers said they would rather not get back on the boat, they admitted that they do not have a choice since they cannot afford to pay the airfare to get to the North West.
“Is because we can’t pay fuh fly we got to take all this nonsense dem doing we,” one passenger stated. “Ah know is public transportation but we still paying for it and we ain’t getting no proper service here at all…this is a regular thing with this boat and me fed up with it.”
Sudden stop
Earlier in the day, a passenger who gave his name as Terry told Stabroek News via mobile phone that the vessel was roaring along the seas on Thursday, packed to capacity as is customary at the end of the August holiday season, when it suddenly stopped in the rough seas. He said that passengers waited for the crew of the vessel to provide information on the situation but it was not until around midnight that “word spread that the boat got a problem.” He added that passengers had no choice but to wait for the next move and around 7 am yesterday a tug arrived to tow the vessel inland. Passenger Janet Singh told this newspaper by phone that food on board was almost finished around 3 pm yesterday. She noted that “all the canteen has is water and drinks.” She said that a number of persons were on board the vessel and the conditions were not ideal for the travelling public. Another passenger who asked not to be named related that he was travelling with his two-year-old son and he noted that the child like others on board was restless all day yesterday. He said that the MV Kimbia was slowly being dragged back into Port Georgetown around 6:30 pm, with land in sight but “getting there seem in vain.”
Meanwhile, families who gathered at the Kingston wharf told this newspaper that the T&HD had been updating the expected arrival time of the vessel but the time depended on the low tide as well as wind direction.
Cindy Smith, a mother of three, told this newspaper that her husband and their son were on board the vessel and she noted that she waited at the Kingston location since around 4 pm yesterday for news of its arrival.
She said various arrival times were given by the Light House following calls to the unit, “but nobody seems to know what’s happening.” She said that the North West area was in dire need of a new vessel to serve the area, adding that the MV Kimbia had been experiencing mechanical problems for years.
She said that the media needed to highlight the plight faced by persons who use the ferry as it is the cheapest means of travelling to Region One. The cost of an airfare per person to Mabaruma ranges from $13,000 to $15,000 while $2,000 is paid by an adult to use the ferry.
On board the boat yesterday was the body of 38-year-old Rawle Mentore of Wauna in the Mabaruma Sub-Region, who was killed last week in the Kurupung area during an altercation with another man. Persons on board noted that the man’s body was embalmed to keep for a few days but some noted that the casket bearing his remains was positioned on board the hatch of the vessel, exposed to the sun.
The other vessel that plies the route to the North West, the MV Northcote, also travelled to the area on Thursday, but continued on its way to Port Kaituma.
Minister Benn had refuted reports carried by this newspaper regarding the vessel. “I want to condemn the type of reporting which is done. The carrion crow journalism which seems to want to talk and to create fear and upset all of the time that there is an expectancy that bad things will happen and that we are allowing these things to happen and deliberately so,” he had told the Government Information Agency (GINA) at the time.
