The Law Failed the Barima Before the Water Did

The Law Failed

BOARD EDITORIAL
For three weeks, Guyanese have been told the sinking of the MV Barima was a tragedy — an act of the river, a matter of currents and cargo and a captain’s judgment.

A new legal analysis by maritime scholar Robert C. Millington, reported by Kaieteur News, says otherwise. It says this tragedy was written into our law books years before July 18.

Millington brings real weight to the claim. He is a retired U.S. Navy officer with 39 years across the military, maritime, and logistics sectors, and holds a U.S. Coast Guard license as both a Merchant Marine Deck Officer and Ship Pilot.

His finding is not sentiment. It is a reading of the statute book most Guyanese have never had reason to open.

Strip away the legal language, and his central point is simple: the MV Barima was, by law, one of the least protected vessels on our waters. Not because someone broke a rule, but because the rule that should have covered a boat her size never existed.

THE 24-METRE GAP

According to Millington’s analysis, Guyana has two sets of shipping safety regulations. One covers small boats — under 24 metres — and requires proper stability checks, passenger counts, and safety drills. The other covers cargo ships, but specifically excludes anything carrying passengers.

The MV Barima was roughly 40.26 metres long. Too big for the small-boat rules. Explicitly excluded from the cargo-ship rules. She fell into a gap where, legally, almost nothing applied. By Millington’s account, a wooden ferry half her size carried more statutory safety obligations than the vessel the state put 73 lives on.

That is not an accident of drafting. That is a hole regulators had years to notice and did not close.

THE REGULATOR WAS ALSO THE OWNER

Here is the finding that should trouble every citizen most: Millington points to Section 3(3) of the Guyana Shipping Act, under which the law treats the Director of MARAD — the very body meant to police safety — as the legal owner of state-owned vessels. The referee and the team are, on paper, the same person. The agency responsible for catching unsafe practices was also, in the eyes of the law, the one responsible for running them.

This is not a technicality. It is a structural conflict of interest that has sat in our statute books, unaddressed, while state ferries carried Guyanese across our rivers.

NOBODY HAD TO COUNT WHO WAS ON BOARD
Perhaps the most damning gap of all: per Millington’s review, Guyanese law never required anyone to keep a proper passenger list or headcount before a vessel like the Barima left the dock — unlike international standards under SOLAS, in place for decades. That is why, in the chaos after the sinking, officials could not even give the public a reliable number of who was aboard.

A GOVERNMENT THAT HAS KNOWN — AND NOT ACTED

None of this is hidden in obscure filings. These gaps sit in the plain text of laws that have gone unrevised for years. A government that governs is one that finds these holes before the water closes over them, not after.

OUR CALL: WAIVE THE CLOCK ON JUSTICE
Millington’s analysis surfaces a detail every grieving family needs to hear now, in plain terms: under Section 23 of the Transport and Harbours Act, families have six months from July 18 to take legal action against the Transport and Harbours Department — and must give one month’s written notice before doing so. That puts the notice deadline at roughly December 18, 2026, and closes the door entirely around January 18, 2027.

Families are still burying their dead. The Commission of Inquiry has not finished its work. Yet the legal clock demanding notice of a lawsuit is already ticking.

The 592 Guardian calls on the Government of Guyana to immediately and publicly suspend or waive this limitation period for all MV Barima victims and families, until the Commission of Inquiry has concluded and its findings are public.

No family should be forced to file a legal notice against the state before they even know, officially, what happened to their loved ones. Anything less turns a technical deadline into a second injury.

The sea did not write these laws. People did — and people can fix them. The first fix does not require new legislation, a committee, or a study.

It requires only a signature: waive the clock, and let grief have its time before the law forecloses it.

— The Board