Open Letter to President Irfaan Ali on MV Barima

Mr. President,

The sinking of the MV Barima is, I believe, the worst maritime tragedy in our country’s history. Families have been devastated. Parents have lost children. Children have lost parents. Scores of ordinary Guyanese have perished. Survivors have endured unimaginable trauma. Every Guyanese shares their grief and extends heartfelt sympathy to all whose lives have been changed forever.

In times of grief, the nation expects leadership. In the hours immediately following the tragedy, Guyanese looked to the Government for clear information, decisive action and reassurance that every available resource had been mobilised. Instead, there was uncertainty, confusion, conflicting reports and official statements that raised as many questions as they answered. Attention appeared to shift too quickly from discovering what had happened to defending official action. That only added to the tragedy.

In any national disaster, Government’s first obligation is to activate a machinery capable of minimising further loss of life and damage to property, coordinating rescue efforts, providing timely and accurate information to anxious relatives – including through a dedicated hotline – and ensuring that the public receives information that is accurate, consistent and credible. Only then can Government turn to the equally important task of establishing the truth.

That is precisely why Parliament enacted the Guyana Shipping Act, 1998. It recognised that when lives are lost in rivers or at sea, the search for truth cannot be left to official assurances or political debate. The Act itself is an elaborate piece of legislation establishing a statutory framework governing maritime safety, regulation and the independent investigation of marine casualties. It also separated the operation of vessels from their regulation by establishing the Maritime Administration as the country’s maritime regulator. My cursory reading of the Act is that it has been systematically ignored in practice. But that is a matter for another forum.

As the nation comes to terms with the scale of this tragedy, disturbing questions arise.

• Was the Barima properly maintained and operated by the Transport and Harbours Department?

• Had the Maritime Administration discharged its statutory responsibility to regulate and oversee the vessel’s safety to protect lives and limbs of passengers and crew?

• Were the vessel’s inspections, surveys and certificates current and fully compliant with the law?

• Had the Maritime Administration identified any deficiencies and, if so, what corrective action was required and taken?

• Did the Transport and Harbours Department comply with every statutory requirement governing passenger safety?

• How did the Minister, who bears responsibility for both the operator and the regulator, satisfy himself that each had properly discharged its separate statutory responsibilities?

• Did failures of operation, regulation, supervision or enforcement contribute to this disaster?

• Does this concentration of responsibility within a single ministry compromise the independence of the regulatory process?

I ask you not to regard these as political questions. They are legal and factual questions, and we deserve and expect honest and factual answers.

The purpose of an independent investigation is not to assign blame before the evidence is heard. It is to ensure that the evidence is gathered independently, examined objectively and reported publicly. That is how confidence is built. It is also how future tragedies are prevented.

Mr. President, public confidence does not exist in a vacuum. Many Guyanese still carry unanswered questions from previous national tragedies, including the Mahdia Dormitory Fire which cost the lives of twenty of our children. There is a widespread perception that official investigations too often fail to satisfy the reasonable expectation that every relevant fact will be exposed and every lesson learnt. Against that background, the handling of the Barima tragedy assumes even greater significance.

There is another matter that deserves urgent attention.

Our maritime legislation still contains penalties that belong to another era. Conduct capable of exposing passengers to grave danger attracts fines that are derisory by modern standards. In an era when Guyana has become one of the fastest-growing economies in the world, such penalties neither deter misconduct nor reflect the value that our society places upon human life.  That is a matter for Parliament to correct.

But where statutory penalties are inadequate, the responsibility of the State becomes correspondingly greater. The families of those who perished are entitled not merely to sympathy but to justice. If regulatory failures contributed to this tragedy, legal accountability cannot end with outdated fines imposed upon individuals. It must extend, where the law and the evidence justify it, to the public authorities charged with protecting those who entrusted their lives to the nation’s transport system.

Mr. President, the Barima must not be allowed to become another national tragedy remembered only for grief and unanswered questions. It should be remembered as the moment when your Administration demonstrated, by action rather than words, that in Guyana the rule of law is stronger than official convenience, party interest and the protection of personalities. The families of the victims deserve the truth. The people of Guyana deserve accountability. History will remember whether your Administration chose official reassurance or independent scrutiny.

I therefore respectfully urge you to declare an appropriate period of national mourning in honour of those who lost their lives. Thereafter, and without delay, to establish an independent Commission of Inquiry under the Guyana Shipping Act, 1998, and to allow it to discharge its mandate completely independently, free from interference or influence of any kind.

That, I believe, is the surest way to honour the dead, comfort the bereaved and restore public confidence in the administration of justice.

Yours truly,
Christopher Ram