Who Decided an 87-Year-Old Ferry Was Safer Than the New Boats Sitting Idle?

On the night of July 18, 2026, the MV Barima left Georgetown for Port Kaituma carrying passengers, cargo, and a certificate that said she was fit for the sea. Hours later she capsized near the mouth of the Pomeroon River. The government’s own count of who was aboard has moved from 133, to 116 plus 17 crew, to 179, because roughly half the people pulled from the water that night were never written down on a passenger list at all. As of this week, dozens of bodies have been recovered and dozens more people remain missing.

Four days on, the country has a great deal of official talk and almost nothing else. We have ministerial press conferences. We have a suspended management team. We have a captain and a first engineer in police custody after testing positive for cannabis. What we do not have, and what an investigation worthy of the word should demand, is a single independently gathered account from the people who actually loaded that vessel, checked her manifest, waved her off the dock, and sailed her. Officials speaking about the disaster is not the same as the people who ran it explaining themselves. That gap is the story this piece is chasing.

An 87 years old ship, the government itself said was living on borrowed time

Built in 1939, the Barima was roughly 87 years old when it went down. Residents of Port Kaituma began publicly demanding a newer, faster vessel as early as 2010. By 2015, officials under the Granger administration were openly acknowledging that the Barima and its sister ferries serving the North-West District were aging and needed urgent attention; then-Cabinet Secretary Joseph Harmon said the old vessels should not remain in service much longer. The government announced plans that year to lease a ferry and acquire two new vessels for the route.

None of that resulted in the Barima’s retirement. Instead, in 2017, the state spent roughly G$150.6 million rehabilitating the same hull: new engines, hull and rudder work, and upgraded passenger accommodation. The ferry sailed on. In March 2026, just four months before it sank, the Ministry of Public Works invited bids for a $440 million rehabilitation programme covering three vessels, with $124.5 million earmarked specifically for further work on the Barima, a sum that, on an 87-year-old hull, raises the obvious question of when “rehabilitation” quietly becomes a euphemism for refusing to retire an asset.

The cargo nobody can verify

Public Works Minister Juan Edghill initially rejected any suggestion that the Barima was overloaded, stating it carried 268 tonnes of cargo against a licensed limit of 284 tonnes, and 116 passengers against a capacity of 397. But those numbers rest on a manifest that has already been shown to be unreliable: at least 32 of the people rescued were not listed on it at all, and Edghill himself later ordered officials to recheck the cargo figures after the passenger-list irregularities surfaced.

More troubling still, opposition leaders relayed survivor accounts, including from passenger Daniel Modeste, that the cargo scales at the Kingston stelling were not functioning, meaning cargo may never have been properly weighed before departure. If true, the 268-tonne figure the government has repeatedly cited as proof the ferry was “within limits” may be an estimate, not a measurement.

This demands direct questions:

• Were the cargo scales at the departure stelling operational on the day of departure? If not, how was the 268-tonne figure calculated, and by whom?
• If cargo was not weighed, how can any official credibly assert the vessel was “operating below its licensed limits,” and why was that assurance given publicly within 24 hours, before an independent review of loading records was possible?
• Was cargo distribution, not just total weight, assessed? Several survivors reported water entering the cargo hold before the capsize, and investigators have noted that stability depends on where weight sits, not only how much there is. Was there a documented stability and loading plan for this specific voyage, and did anyone check it against the actual cargo placed aboard?
• Who is responsible for verifying manifests and weighing cargo at the Kingston wharf, and what oversight, if any, exists to confirm that process was actually followed rather than assumed?
• Why did the government’s public position evolve from “no overloading, a large wave caused this” to ordering a recheck of the manifest and cargo figures within a single news cycle? What changed in the government’s own information between those two statements?
• Who actually signs off on seaworthy
• Public Works Minister Juan Edghill has been the government’s central voice on this point, and his position has been consistent: the Barima was certified operational, she was last dry docked in 2024, her next dry docking was scheduled for later this year, and no engineering report ever declared her unfit for service. He has said reports claiming otherwise confused ordinary procurement paperwork, listing planned maintenance, with an actual safety finding.
• But the chain of authority behind that certification is exactly what the public has not been shown. The vessel operated under the Transport and Harbours Department, was regulated by the Maritime Administration Department, and both ultimately answer to the Ministry of Public Works, the same ministry making the public case for the vessel’s fitness. An investigation that only accepts the minister’s word for what the regulator concluded is not an investigation. The public needs the actual survey reports, the names of the surveyors who signed them, and the dates those signatures were affixed, not a paraphrase from the agency’s political head.
• It is also worth asking plainly why, if the crew’s fitness to sail mattered as much as their equipment, there was apparently no random pre departure drug and alcohol screening in place before this crew ever left the dock. Testing happened only after the vessel had already gone down.
• Two replacement vessels, both sitting idle, for entirely different reasons
• This is perhaps the most damning fact in the entire timeline. Guyana did not fail to buy replacement vessels for this route. It bought them, and then could not get either one into service.
• The MV Ma Lisha, a 12.7 million US dollar vessel built in India and delivered in April 2023, was meant to serve Port Kaituma directly. It never has. The minister’s own explanation is that the wharf built to receive her at Port Kaituma suffered significant soil movement, forcing large sections to be demolished and rebuilt, a project that by the government’s own account began in January 2023 and was supposed to finish by April 2024. It is now July 2026. A finished vessel has been sitting available for more than three years while a piece of civil engineering on land failed to keep pace.
• The Kalliopi N, a newer roll on roll off vessel capable of carrying 264 to 284 passengers along with cars and trucks, arrived in Guyana in May 2026. The minister said at the time that the President himself would commission her shortly, alongside new terminal buildings at Kingston, Mabaruma, and Morawhanna. As of this week, more than two months later and days after the Barima went down with well over a hundred people aboard, that commissioning still has not happened. A modern, air conditioned vessel built for exactly this route has been waiting for a ribbon cutting while the country’s oldest and most fragile ferry kept making the run.
• Two different vessels, two different points of failure, one identical outcome: neither was carrying passengers when it mattered most. That is not bad luck. That is a procurement and infrastructure pipeline that consistently fails at the last mile, and it deserves the same scrutiny as the boat that sank.

Where are the survivors that ran the ship

Eighteen crew members were aboard the Barima. Several survived. Beyond the captain, the first engineer, and one sailor who were taken into custody, and a mate described as assisting police, the public has heard almost nothing directly from the crew who were on deck that night. We have Leon Murray, a passenger, describing through a local outlet how the alarm was raised and how he searched the water for his family. We do not have a deckhand describing how the cargo was stowed, or a purser describing how a manifest built for 116 people apparently missed dozens of the people actually on board.

Custody is a reasonable explanation for the captain’s silence. It is not an explanation for everyone else’s. The mate assisting investigators has not spoken publicly. Surviving crew who are not in custody have not been produced for questioning by journalists, only referenced by ministers. A disaster this size does not get explained by government press briefings alone. It gets explained by the people who were physically present, and right now those people are being managed rather than heard.

A pattern, not an incident

Guyana’s ferry fleet includes several other vessels that mirror the Barima’s history: the MV Malali (built 1962), the MV Makouria (built 1959), and the MV Kanawaima, in continuous service on the Suriname crossing since 1998 despite what has been described as serious, ongoing technical trouble. The 2025 national budget allocated roughly G$9.9 billion for river transportation, rising to G$11.2 billion for 2026, and actual 2025 spending was reported at G$10.7 billion. Even so, no plan in that budget funded a purpose-built vessel intended to retire the Barima outright, and the oldest, most compromised vessel in the system was the one making a scheduled overnight run in July 2026.

Two crew members, including the captain, tested positive for cannabis after being rescued, a genuinely serious finding, but one that risks becoming a convenient single explanation that forecloses harder institutional questions. A positive test after the fact does not establish impairment at the time of departure, and it does not explain a non-functioning scale, an unreliable manifest, a new ferry sitting uncommissioned at dock, or another new ferry that cannot keep a fixed schedule because of a mismatch between its design and the infrastructure it was bought to serve.

What this investigation still needs, and has not gotten

Secondhand briefings from ministers and secondhand summaries from wire services have carried this story for four days. They are not enough, and they were never going to be enough. What is missing, and what any credible accounting of this disaster requires, is direct testimony from the people who were physically responsible for that vessel’s departure:

The dock staff and Transport and Harbours Department personnel who loaded cargo onto the Barima and can explain how 268 tonnes was distributed across her hold that night.

The ticketing and manifest staff who can explain how a document meant to list everyone aboard failed to record roughly half the people later pulled alive from the water.

The surviving crew members who are not in custody, who have been referenced by officials but not produced for independent questioning.

The suspended management team, sent home in the days after the sinking, who have not given any public account of their own decisions.

The MARAD surveyors whose signatures, not a minister’s assurance, actually certified this vessel seaworthy, and who have not spoken at all.

Until those people are heard from directly, not summarized by officials defending their own ministry, the public is being asked to accept a story about an old boat, bad luck, and a rogue captain. The far more uncomfortable and far better supported story is one of a transport system that has known for fifteen years which boat needed to be retired, bought its replacements, and then let unrelated failures, a failed wharf, an uncommissioned ferry, a rehabilitation program that never quite finishes, keep that 1939 hull as the only real option on the water. The Barima did not sink because Guyana lacked ships. It sank because the ships it already had were sitting idle, and nobody has yet had to answer for that in their own words.

Source: Guyana1news.com