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Vice President Noli de Castro said authorities are now looking into
reports that the captain of MV Princess of the Stars is alive and is
in hiding, according to media reports on Tuesday.
De Castro, during a radio interview also on
Tuesday, cited information indicating Sulpicio Lines Inc., the owner
of Princess of the Stars that went down off Sibuyan Island in
Romblon province on June 21, is keeping the ship’s captain,
Florencio Marimon Sr., and at least one survivor in a safe house.
Sulpicio Lines immediately denied the allegation
made by the Vice President.
“That is not true,” Ma. Victoria Florido,
the embattled shipping firm’s lawyer and spokesman, told The
Manila Times during a telephone interview.
If the accusation were true, Florido said, then
Sulpicio Lines would have quickly produced Marimon before the media
and the Board of Marine Inquiry to clear the issue. The board is
investigating the incident.
“We all wish to have with us Capt. Marimon. If
we have located him, and he is still alive, Sulpicio Lines will be
the very first one to present him so that this will all be behind
us,” the lawyer-spokesman added.
Florido said the ferry owner will not fault
anyone for speculating, but she added de Castro’s accusation does
not help in getting to the bottom of the sinking.
The Coast Guard earlier said Marimon is in the
best position to shed light on what happened.
There had been earlier speculation that the ship
captain and the supposed survivor, Dexter Lagahid, managed to escape
from the ship aboard a life raft. The two have not been heard from
since.
Presumably hundreds of passengers and crew died
when the ferry sank after running into a typhoon. Only 57 were
reported to have survived. Most of those killed are believed trapped
inside the vessel.
President Gloria Arroyo, fresh from an official
visit to the United States, traveled with a medical mission to
Sibuyan also on Tuesday.
The Chief Executive went there after presiding
over a Cabinet meeting in Iloilo City, also in the central part of
the country. The city had borne the brunt of Typhoon Frank that
stood in the path of the Cebu-bound Princess of the Stars.
Interpol team helping
An Interpol team has been dispatched to help in
the recovery and identification of the victims, the global police
agency said Monday.
The team arrived Sunday in central Cebu province
at the request of the Philippine government, the agency based in the
French city of Lyon said.
Recovery efforts remained suspended as of
Tuesday while officials awaited results of tests on water taken from
inside the ferry to determine if a cargo of toxic chemicals was
leaking out.
The suspension was put in place Friday last week
upon discovery that Princess of the Stars had been carrying 10 tons
of endosulfan, a poisonous pesticide.
Elena Bautista, Transportation Undersecretary
and the chief of Task Force Princess of the Stars that is looking
into the sinking, said the government’s retrieval operations will
remain suspended until today or Thursday.
Bautista added that she wants to speed up the
operations for the “peace of mind” of the victims’ families.
Refloating the ‘Princess’
According to her, Sulpicio Lines is locked in a
legal discussion with its insurer, Oriental Assurance Corp., which
is barring the shipping firm from deciding on what to do with the
sunken ship.
Bautista hinted that the government may force
the refloating of Princess of the Stars if it would be the most
effective way to recover the bodies and the endosulfan shipment.
Reports said Sulpicio Lines rejects refloating
because the insurer might deny the ferry owner’s valid notice of
abandonment on possibility that the sunken ship may still be
salvaged.
Filing a valid notice of abandonment would mean
that Sulpicio Lines is effectively turning over the responsibility
of Princess of the Stars to the insurer.
Florido also denied turning down the refloating,
saying the shipping company had been talking to a private firm that
specializes in refloating capsized vessels.
She added that refloating a vessel may take
months. Florido cited the bombed SuperFerry 14, which was refloated
after six months.
Water samples, taken after a specialist salvage
team drilled small holes into the hull, have been sent to Manila for
testing.
“If [the samples test] positive for toxic
contaminants, then the next step would be to refloat the vessel by a
salvage company,” said diving supervisor Ruben Jaciel.
“If [they are] not toxic, we will open a
window large enough for divers to enter the vessel and locate the
container [containing the poisonous chemicals],” he added.
Divers have reported seeing many bodies floating
inside the hull but have been unable to retrieve them due to fallen
debris.
Authorities and relatives of the missing
passengers had been pressuring Sulpicio Lines to retrieve the bodies
immediately so that they could be identified and buried.
Free authentication
The National Statistics Office and the Public
Attorney’s Office announced also on Tuesday that they will ensure
that the relatives of victims need not pay the P140 fee for
authenticating documents, prerequisites in processing death claims
for their loved ones.
During an interview with ABS-CBN’s morning
show Umagang Kay Ganda, the statistics office’s administrator,
Carmelita Ericta, said the attorney’s office has waived legal fees
for the victims’ families.
All that the families have to show, she added,
are the death claims.
Sulpicio Lines had required the authenticated
documents before accepting the death claims amounting to P200,000
each.
Up to the insurer
Sulpicio Lines safety engineer Nelson Morales
said the decision on what to do with the ferry was no longer in
their hands.
“Our role now is limited because we have
already abandoned the ship. When the captain of the vessel declared
the ship abandoned, and it sank, it is now the insurers’ turn to
take over,” he added.
A senior maritime official previously charged
that Sulpicio Lines was deliberately avoiding refloating of the
vessel so they could claim it as a total loss for insurance
purposes.
The ferry owner has filed a suit against the
national weather bureau, Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and
Astronomical Services Administration, or Pagasa, blaming it for
inaccurate weather forecasts at the height of the typhoon. Such
forecasts, Sulpicio Lines said, led to the sinking.
The weather bureau said it is not bothered by
the suit, despite admitting it may have committed errors in its
weather forecasts.
Its chief, Prisco Nilo, maintained that the
agency’s deviations from its forecasts remain within international
standards. Besides, he said, weather forecasting is not an exact
science.
Defective vessels
Also on Tuesday, the Maritime Industry Authority
ordered rectification of deficiencies in seven vessels of Sulpicio
Lines before the agency will allow the boats to sail.
Col. Primo Rivera, the authority’s deputy
administrator for operations, said an audit team made the
recommendation after inspecting at least 20 vessels owned by
Sulpicio Lines.
The seven apparently defective boats are
Princess of the South, Princess of the Earth, Cagayan Princess,
Princess of Paradise, Palawan Princess, Princess of the Universe and
Princess of the Ocean.
Up for inspection are Princess of the Caribbean,
Filipina Princess, Cotabato Princess, Tacloban Princess, Cebu
Princess and Dipolog Princess.
In Congress, House Speaker Prospero Nograles
called for a probe of sea tragedies, including supposedly
overlapping functions of government agencies which may have also
been the behind the country’s “embarrassing” maritime safety
record.
Nograles said these maritime agencies, which may
have been responsible for the sinking of Princess of the Stars,
should not be allowed to escape the consequences of their
negligence.
With the investigation, he added, lawmakers may
also determine the need to impose stiffer penalties for civil and
criminal liabilities of government officials and private entities
involved in the maritime business who do not exercise utmost caution
in ensuring the safety of their ships and passengers.
-- Xinhua and Francis Earl A. Cueto with Anthony Vargas and Jomar
Canlas
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