Ferry sinks off Batangas but all 137 aboard rescued

Reckless ship owners in the Philippines were threatened with the death penalty yesterday, as the second ferry to sink in five days went down, government officials said.

But all the 137 people on board the Peñafrancia were rescued after it hit an uncharted underwater hazard as it sailed into the port of Batangas at 2 a.m., the Coast Guard said.

Government investigators said hitting an uncharted water hazard only meant that the vessel had veered off its original course.

Last week, the overloaded Annahada sank off Sulu, claiming at least 139 lives.

Transportation and Communications Secretary Vicente Rivera ordered the Maritime and Industry Authority to be more "vigilant" in ensuring passenger safety at sea.

He warned ship owners that the transportation department was drafting a law that would make "reckless imprudence ... a heinous crime" punishable by death.

Rivera said the "chances of overloading" were high during this week's Easter holidays when thousands of people are expected to flock to their home provinces.

Ship owners are able to elude Coast Guard inspections by picking up additional passengers from smaller boats after leaving port.

"Once they leave port, they stop along the way to pick up passengers," Rivera said.

When the Annahada capsized, Defense Secretary Orlando Mercado said overloading of ferries was "rampant" in Philippine shipping.

But ship operators argued that if the death penalty was to be introduced it would have to include government officials as well.

"In my opinion, I think that the proposed measure will not help," said Nelson Morales, head of the safety management of Sulpicio Lines Inc., one of the country's leading shipping operators.

"The best way to do it is to have a law where government authorities will also be included (in the death penalty) like inspectors and agencies that give licenses to captains," Morales told AFP.

Coast Guard area commander Candido Florencio said the steel-hulled Peñafrancia was licensed to carry 600 people and was not overloaded.

On hitting a submerged object upon arriving in Batangas from Sablayan in nearby Mindoro island, the Peñafrancia tilted to one side before sinking slowly, he said.

All 117 passengers and 20 crew members were taken from the ferry before it went down, Florencio told radio station dzMM.

"Water penetrated its engine and it stopped, but the crew was able to send a distress call to (the Coast Guard in) Batangas and two passenger ships responded to help in the rescue," he said.

"It sank while it was being towed, but all crew and authorized passengers had been transferred to the two rescue vessels by then."

The Peñafrancia sinking came five days after the Annahada capsized last Wednesday, leaving at least 139 passenger dead and many others believed missing.

More than 200 people were believed to be aboard the Annahada when it capsized, although only nine crewmen and 11 passengers were listed in its manifest when it set sail.

A total of 79 survivors have been rescued and the search for further survivors and bodies would continue, the Coast Guard said.

Coast Guard spokesman Lieutenant Commander Ricardo Piollo said search operations would continue off Sulu and the nearby island of Tawi-Tawi, where at least 35 bodies were recovered at the weekend.

"We will not stop conducting search and rescue as long as relatives or families of those believed on the ferry are saying that their relatives are (still) missing," Piollo said over government television.

Search efforts will only be called off once officials are certain no more bodies would be found, he said.

Interisland ferries are the backbone of maritime transportation in this archipelago of more than 7,000 islands and tragedies often occur during holidays when vessels are filled beyond capacity.

In December, the Asia-South Korea ferry sank in central Philippine seas, killing 44 Christmas holidaymakers. Four months earlier, 51 people died when a ferry caught fire.

The world's worst peacetime sea tragedy also occurred in the central Philippines in 1987, when more than 4,000 people died after the overloaded Doña Paz ferry collided with an oil tanker.