Grieving dad threatens legal action against vessel owner

By ADRIAN MATHIAS FENENG
A FATHER of ten children who lost his second-born son in the mv Rabaul Queen disaster on Feb 2 will take legal actions against the owner of Rabaul Shipping Peter Sharp if the inquiry  does not satisfy him.
Willie Mullekena from Pomio district, East New Britain said his son Owen Mullekena was on his way from Rabaul to Lae for his final year Architectural Drafting at Lae Politechnical College when he went missing after the passenger ship sank nine nautical miles off the coast of Finschhafen, Morobe province.
Willie said his wife died in 2009 leaving the burden on him to raise his ten children.
“As a single parent I have worked extra hard in raising my kids where all of them are in school and losing one who was about to graduate and work is heart-breaking,” Willie said.
He said his son Owen was an excellent student at college and had a bright future.
“My son would not have lost his life if I had bought his airline ticket to fly from Rabaul to Lae. But because I didn’t know that the government was going to subsidise school fees, I told him to travel by ship to make it easier for me to pay for his school fees and the ones after him,” Willie said.