The MV Barima Inquiry Must Follow the Chain of Command

 The MV Barima Inquiry Must Follow the Chain of Command

OPINION BY : Hem Kumar October 2026

The inquiry must not end with blame assigned to the vessel’s crew, individual Coast Guard ranks, MARAD officers or technical staff. Those who worked at the operational level may have made mistakes, but the evidence emerging from the hearings raises a larger and more troubling question: who was responsible for ensuring that Guyana had a competent, equipped and accountable maritime-safety system before the tragedy occurred?

Lives were not lost simply because individuals were incompetent. They were lost in circumstances that point to gross negligence at several levels of public administration.

The testimony concerning search-and-rescue operations is particularly alarming. Rear Admiral Hayden Pritchard’s questioning of Acting Harbour Master Romain Seurattan laid bare an extraordinary situation: a private civilian vessel, operated by Westzyde Marine—a contractor reportedly engaged in Coast Guard vessel maintenance—became involved in a search-and-locate operation coordinated through the Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre.

Why was a private contractor in that position? Was its involvement formally authorized? Were its personnel qualified and its vessel properly equipped for emergency response? Was the assistance rendered at no cost, or under an arrangement that could create financial or operational conflicts? What records exist of the deployment, communication, instructions and expenses?

Most importantly, why were coordinates and operational information apparently accepted without independent verification by the responsible maritime authorities?

These are not minor procedural questions. In a search-and-rescue operation, unverified information can cost lives. Every minute lost because responders are sent to an incorrect location, every breakdown in communication and every failure to independently confirm distress information can turn an emergency into a catastrophe.

The fact that a Coast Guard officer was reportedly aboard the private vessel does not settle the matter. It raises further questions. Who authorized that officer’s deployment? What authority did he exercise? Was he operating under a written command structure? Did the MRCC maintain direct and documented control over the search? Was this an established emergency protocol or an improvised response born out of a shortage of public assets?

If Guyana’s maritime authorities had to depend on a private maintenance contractor during a major rescue operation, then the country must confront the obvious reality: the State was not adequately prepared

MARAD’s own acknowledged resource constraints must be examined in their full administrative and political context. The department had limited assets available at the time, despite being responsible for supervising a maritime sector that includes passenger vessels carrying ordinary Guyanese across waterways that can become deadly within minutes.

Guyana operates several passenger vessels, including ferries and riverine services on which workers, schoolchildren, elderly passengers, families and residents of hinterland and riverine communities depend. Safety cannot be reduced to paperwork issued at a desk, nor can emergency response be left to chance, private goodwill or last-minute improvisation.

The COI has reportedly heard troubling evidence about the absence of safety drills, gaps in maintenance arrangements, missing operating manuals, an unregistered emergency beacon, communications failures, limited capacity for nighttime searches and outdated Coast Guard standard operating procedures. It has also heard that rescued passengers were not wearing life jackets.

Taken together, these failures paint a picture of an institution that may have been permitted to operate without the basic systems required to prevent a disaster or respond effectively once one occurred.

That is why the Commission must examine the entire administrative chain.

The inquiry must summon and question those who held ministerial and executive responsibility for maritime transport, regulation, rescue readiness, budgeting, staffing, procurement and compliance enforcement during the relevant period. This includes Public Works Minister Juan Edghill and former minister Deodat Indar, as Civil Society groups and  APNU has rightly demanded.

Ministerial responsibility does not disappear because a minister is represented by an attorney at a public inquiry. Legal representation is not testimony. It cannot explain what ministers knew, what warnings they received, what requests for resources were made, what decisions were taken, what deficiencies were reported and why corrective action was either delayed or not taken at all.

The Commission should require a full account of:

– The annual budgets allocated to MARAD, the Coast Guard and the MRCC for vessel inspection, emergency communications, training, rescue equipment and maintenance.

– Requests for additional vessels, engines, radios, navigation systems, life-saving equipment, fuel, personnel and nighttime search capacity.

– MARAD inspection reports, deficiency notices, certification records and enforcement actions involving the MV Barima and other passenger vessels.

– The legal and operational basis for involving private contractors in State-led search-and-rescue operations.

– Contracts, invoices, communications and authorizations connected to Westzyde Marine’s role in the response.

– The registration, inspection and operational readiness of emergency position-indicating radio beacons and other distress-alert systems.

– Coast Guard and MRCC standard operating procedures, including the date they were last updated and the reasons joint search-and-rescue exercises were not conducted.

– The availability and enforcement of life jackets, passenger manifests, safety briefings, emergency drills and trained crew requirements across the passenger-vessel fleet.

– The corrective measures introduced since July 18, and evidence that they are actually being implemented rather than merely announced.

The inquiry must also investigate whether the weaknesses exposed in the MV Barima case exist elsewhere in the country’s passenger-vessel system. A disaster involving one vessel may be the symptom of a wider regulatory failure. Every state-operated, subsidized, licensed or certified passenger boat and ferry should now be subject to an urgent, independent safety audit.

That audit should assess seaworthiness, maintenance records, crew certification, passenger capacity, life jackets, emergency lighting, communication equipment, distress beacons, navigation systems, manifests, safety drills and access to a competent rescue response at all hours.

The Government cannot wait for the final COI report before acting. It should immediately publish a national maritime-safety corrective-action plan with firm deadlines, named responsible agencies and regular public progress reports. That plan must include modern rescue assets, functional communications systems, mandatory joint emergency exercises, independent inspections, properly registered distress beacons and enforceable standards for every passenger vessel.

Guyana’s growing oil wealth has made repeated claims of resource scarcity increasingly difficult to accept. If the country can finance major infrastructure projects and rapidly expanding development plans, it can equip its maritime agencies to protect citizens travelling on public waterways. This should be an absolute non-negotiable demand mirroring our Safe-streets, Safe- city initiative.

No family should have to discover, after losing a relative, that a public rescue operation depended on an inadequately equipped agency, uncertain communication, unverified coordinates or a private contractor stepping in because the State lacked the capacity to respond.

The MV Barima tragedy must not become another inquiry that identifies failures but shields those with the authority to prevent them. Accountability must travel upward—from the vessel, to the regulator, to the rescue agencies, to the permanent secretaries, senior administrators and ministers who controlled policy, funding and oversight.

The Commission’s duty is not merely to explain what happened on July 18. It must establish why Guyana’s maritime-safety architecture was allowed to become so vulnerable—and who must answer for it.