EDITORIAL - Another maritime disaster

Two days before the Feast of the Holy Innocents, the bodies of three children were fished out of the waters near Verde Island off Batangas province. The ferry M/V Baleno-9 sank just days after the Christmas Eve collision of another ferry and a fishing boat near the mouth of Manila Bay. Three bodies were recovered and at least 24 people are still missing in that collision, with divers unable to reach the sunken ferry. In the Baleno disaster, search teams rescued 63 passengers and crew but 22 remained missing yesterday, with six confirmed fatalities.

Responding to the latest disaster, Malacañang officials said President Arroyo ordered Transportation and Communications Secretary Leandro Mendoza to spearhead a “safety audit” of all passenger vessels and review the competence of concerned agencies. The President should assign those tasks to someone else and include her transportation secretary in any competence review, since there has been little improvement in the enforcement of maritime safety rules under his watch. But the President would not fire Mendoza for signing the $329-million broadband deal with ZTE Corp., and she would not fire him now – or any of his subordinates handling maritime transportation – over an unending string of deadly ferry accidents.

What the public will get is another round of maritime inquiries that will start with great fanfare, with shipping executives summoned to face investigators and the press. The inquiries almost always end up with little more than a slap on the wrist of the shipping executives, and hardly any reforms in improving maritime transportation safety. Those inquiries simply encourage the shipping industry to go on with business as usual. No key public official has been punished for any maritime tragedy. Resigning to take command responsibility for such disasters is unheard of among public officials in this country. Instead they brazen it out, and blame the weather.

The problem for the shipping industry, and the department tasked with its regulation, is that good weather has prevailed around the country since Christmas Eve when the wooden-hulled Catalyn B collided with the steel-hulled fishing boat Anatalia. Yesterday, survivors of the sinking of the Baleno-9 said the roll-on roll-off ferry started taking in water and listed on its way to Batangas. Was a door left open? Did a vehicle on the RORO come loose from its mooring? By the time the answer is known, the story would have been forgotten, along with the urgency of improving maritime safety. The nation will remember only when another deadly sea disaster occurs.