The safety of passengers using the `backtrack’ speedboat service to Suriname at Number 78 Village is of concern to the government but citizens cannot continue to do the wrong thing and still expect to be protected, Home Affairs Minister Clement Rohee says.
And Suriname police investigators were in Guyana on Sunday to conduct investigations into the mishap.
On Friday a speedboat carrying ten passengers capsized in the Corentyne River. One woman drowned and another is missing and feared dead. The eight other passengers dramatically survived the rough waters by clinging on to bags and other objects.
Rohee told Stabroek News in an interview yesterday that although this practice has been going on for some time now it was illegal. He noted that the only legitimate river transport operating between Guyana and Suriname was the one at Moleson Creek. The Home Affairs Minister however could say whether the administration would regulate the backtrack operations, but is admonishing citizens to use the legal ferry service and desist from crossing via the illegal speedboats.
Meanwhile, the search continued yesterday in the Corentyne River for Cheryl Peters, who is missing and feared dead following Friday’s accident. Police from Suriname and local boat captains searched the river yesterday again for the Mocha Arcadia mother of five. Relatives of the 44-year-old have begun to lose hope.
Another woman, Ashrani Hardat called ‘Buck’ of Annandale, East Coast Demerara drowned during the mishap and her body was found in a fishing net in the Corentyne River aback of Number 65 Village on Friday.
Reports are that 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 on Friday 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 had told this newspaper that after the boat started taking in water, she used her cellular phone to call the minibus driver called `Dougla’, who had taken her and her mother to Corriverton from Annandale earlier in the morning. She told him of the accident but before she was finished talking to him the boat went down and she started screaming.
The woman 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. Mohan disclosed that 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 and the captain left in a hurry, she said.
Many persons prefer to use the ‘backtrack’ system instead of the legitimate ferry that plies the Moleson Creek to Suriname route. Passengers who frequently use the backtrack vessels have argued that although it takes only 25 minutes to get across from Guyana to Suriname the drive to Nickerie and then to Paramaribo takes more than eight hours.
Persons have also bemoaned the deplorable state of the road, which they said has been the case for many years. The cost of a return ticket, which is valid for one month, is $3,000 on the legal ferry service. With the ‘backtrack’ arrangement at Number 78 Village, Corriverton, a one-way trip costs $1,000. The boats go to Nickerie and passengers travel less than three hours by road to get to Paramaribo.
Mostly traders use the ‘backtrack’ route as it allows them quick access to and from Suriname. On the Guyana side of the border officers of the Berbice Anti-Smuggling Squad (BASS) usually maintain a presence there along with a custom official who would normally collect duties from passengers importing goods.
Asked why government has not made any move to regularize the situation existing at the backtrack crossings, Rohee said that some of operators do not want this, while others are bent on breaking the laws. “Passengers are well aware that they are travelling on an illegal ferry but yet they go ahead,” the minister said.
He encouraged citizens to use the legitimate service, acknowledging that in any system there would always be shortcomings. The owner of ‘Aunty’s Boat Landing’ where the capsized boat operated from said that they have been registered in Suriname to ply their trade.
Apart from ‘Aunty’s Landing’ two other speedboat operators, Eno Bharrat and Roy Ramdass operate the same route. Government has signally failed to regulate the backtrack operation which is being done in the open with the operators publicly advertising their service. The backtrack route is also a getaway point for criminals operating out of Suriname and French Guiana.
