Witnesses say ferry was packed with passengers

By ELLEN TIAMU
THE main message coming across from witnesses on the opening day of the Commission of Inquiry into the sinking of the mv Rabaul Queen in Lae yesterday was that the ferry was packed with passengers.
The inter-island ferry sank off Finschhafen, Morobe province, early on the morning of Feb 2.
There were 237 survivors and more than 130 people were missing and presumed dead.
According to the ship’s manifests presented to the inquiry last week by the owner and operator of the ship, Peter Sharp, there were a total of 460 passengers and crew on board 
The first witness, Lucille Pongi, said she and her younger sister and a niece, had to sit all the way from Kimbe, the last port of call for the ferry before Lae.
“You could not move, you could not go to the toilet, you had to jump over people,” she told the inquiry.
Alexander Buago, 21, a student at the National Polytech Institute in Lae, said he stayed virtually in the same spot on the promenade deck, all the way from Kimbe because there was hardly space to move.
 PNG Power electrician Theodore Yep, 26, said he had an economy ticket but was allowed onto the first class deck after a friend, needing a hand with his four-year-old daughter, gave money to the crew guarding the entrance, for him to be allowed in.
This happened while he was tra­velling from Rabaul to Kimbe.
Yep said there were only about eight people on the executive deck on that leg of the voyage but that increased to 19 when they picked up more passengers at Kimbe.
He estimated the deck to have a seating capacity of 38 and said there was plenty of room to move around and he had even coaxed a few people on the overcrowded promenade section next to first class, to jump over the barricade and join them.
He said when he had to go to the bottom deck to bring water for his cousin, he had to jump over the ship’s railing to get down as the ship was crammed with passengers.
Roderick Voit, 26, from East New Britain, said the ill-fated ship was so crowded people were sitting along the stairs leading up to the other two decks making it hard for people to move around from deck to deck.
The inquiry, sitting at the Lae International Hotel, continues today.