Forward Guyana Movement (FGM) leader, attorney-at-law and the party’s lone Member of Parliament, Amanza Walton-Desir, is urging the Government of Guyana to launch a mandatory marine casualty investigation into the MV Barima disaster, warning that a Commission of Inquiry (COI) alone will not satisfy the country’s international legal obligations or uncover the technical failures that led to one of Guyana’s deadliest maritime tragedies.
Walton-Desir made the call during an appearance on Friday’s edition of the radio programme Keeping Up, hosted by Keane, where she argued that Guyana is legally obligated under international maritime conventions to carry out a specialized marine safety investigation following the sinking.
Her comments come as the human toll from the disaster continues to mount. As of the latest official update, 73 bodies have been recovered, 76 people have been rescued, and authorities estimate that 179 passengers and crew were aboard the 87-year-old MV Barima when it capsized off Guyana’s northwest coast on July 18, 2026, while travelling from Georgetown to Port Kaituma.
According to Walton-Desir, the government’s discussion of establishing a Commission of Inquiry should not come at the expense of a technical marine casualty investigation.
“From the time this tragedy happened, I’ve been saying that we need a marine casualty investigation,” she said. “I keep hearing, ‘Let’s have a Commission of Inquiry.’ I’m not saying let’s not have a COI. That’s not what I’m saying. But they’re two different things for two different purposes. It cannot be one or the other. It has to be both.”
Describing herself as a trained maritime lawyer, Walton-Desir said Guyana voluntarily accepted binding international obligations by becoming a party to several maritime conventions administered by the International Maritime Organisation (IMO).
“If there is a marine casualty or serious marine casualty—that is, a ship is lost, lives are lost—then you have to. Not that you could if you want to. You must do a marine safety investigation.”
She explained that such investigations are fundamentally different from commissions of inquiry because they are designed to establish the technical causes of an accident and develop recommendations to prevent future tragedies.
According to Walton-Desir, the investigation would require a multidisciplinary team of specialists—including ship surveyors, seaworthiness experts, human factors analysts, accident reconstruction specialists and maritime investigators—to reconstruct the vessel’s final voyage and examine every aspect of its operation.
“You’re talking about the collection of at least 10 or 12 experts. Not one person that has, as we put it in Guyana, top, top knowledge of everything, but 12 different people specifically trained on that aspect solely.”
She said the findings would culminate in a formal safety report that Guyana is legally required to submit to the IMO.
“They will make up the safety report that they have to present to the state, and that Guyana has a legal obligation to present to the IMO. I am not even sure that we have notified this accident to the IMO.”
Walton-Desir warned that relying solely on a Commission of Inquiry (COI) risks leaving the most important questions unanswered.
While a COI can examine administrative failures and determine who may have been responsible for decisions leading up to the disaster, she said it lacks the specialized expertise necessary to determine whether the vessel was seaworthy, whether loading procedures were followed, whether maintenance was adequate and what technical failures caused the sinking.
“If we go for a Commission of Inquiry only, the President can assemble 10 people—not necessarily technical people—but that will never get to the technical depth that will tell us why what happened happened.”
She argued that failing to conduct a proper marine casualty investigation would deny Guyana the technical recommendations needed to improve maritime safety.
“We lose the opportunity to make sure that we are able to get the technical implementation, the technical recommendations to make sure that this don’t happen again in Guyana.”
Walton-Desir also maintained that public confidence in the process would be strengthened if the investigation were conducted by independent experts rather than individuals connected to Guyana’s existing maritime system.
“Guyanese will feel far more comfortable if people who are not in the system are the people investigating the system.”
Her intervention adds to mounting calls for an independent examination of the MV Barima disaster, which has triggered widespread scrutiny of Guyana’s maritime safety regime, the continued operation of ageing vessels and the decisions that allowed the nearly nine-decade-old ferry to remain in service until disaster struck.
