Ferry’s owners ‘used litigation’ to avoid rules

THE National Maritime Safety Authority says the owners of the ferry that sank last week used litigation to get out of following the rules.
The country’s worst maritime disaster saw 246 people being rescued while 100-plus remain unaccounted for after the mv Rabaul Queen sank in rough seas last Thursday near the end of a 20-hour journey from Kimbe, West New Britain, to Lae, Morobe.
There’s debate over the number of people missing but the authority’s operations manager Capt Nurur Rahman said on Rabaul Shipping’s own admission, the vessel had been grossly overloaded.
Radio New Zealand quoted Rahman as saying the company had other maritime casualties on its record and during the past decade had kept the authority at bay by flooding it with legal paperwork.
“This sort of company is more or less authoritarian in the managing director directing everything.
“Whenever we tend to speak with them or write to them it’s always a legal notice of things to do with the courts so it has really rattled us as well,” Rahman said.
He said an investigation team would be travelling to Rabaul in the next few days to talk to the shipping company.
Managing director Peter Sharp said this week the ship had not been overloaded as claimed by some media outlets.
He said he was helping the authority in the investigations.