IT’S A TEXTBOOK EXAMPLE OF EVERYTHING wrong with our inter-island shipping industry. Last Friday, the Philippine Coast Guard had to suddenly call off the search, rescue and retrieval operations in the MV Princess of the Stars because of a cargo of pesticide on the sunken ship. Filipino divers and assisting US Navy frogmen were pushed to the sidelines as bureaucrats started to engage in the blame game.

The whole thing was triggered by two letters from Del Monte Philippines Inc. Both concerned the 400 25-kilo boxes of endosulfan stored in a 40-foot container van. The pesticide was to be used for the company’s Bukidnon banana plantation. Del Monte said the MV Princess of Paradise was supposed to carry the cargo. Somehow, the shipment ended up with the Princess of the Stars.

Del Monte sent a letter to the Fertilizer and Pesticide Authority (FPA) on June 24, informing the latter about the pesticide aboard the sunken ship. Del Monte then sent a letter to Sulpicio Lines, reminding the shipping firm to make known the presence of toxic substances on the MV Princess of the Stars, and to take precautions so that the environment and the people in the vicinity of the sea mishap would be kept from harm.

Upon being told of Del Monte’s letter, the Department of Transportation and Communications informed the Office of Civil Defense about the cargo; the OCD, in turn, called a meeting with experts from the Department of Health, the FPA, and the University of the Philippines. The result: the Coast Guard ordered all divers to get out of the water, and the jittery local government of San Fernando instructed residents not to dive, swim or fish in the vicinity of the wreck. Although no fish kills have been reported, and although the pesticide isn’t flammable and does not dissolve easily in water, national and local authorities want to determine if the cargo is still intact or not.

After having been caught flatfooted, everyone is now trying to show they’re doing something.

Sulpicio, which has been blaming God and the weather bureau for the sinking of MV Princess of the Stars, has been taken to task for its failure to inform the authorities about the cargo. In response, Sulpicio claimed the shipment of pesticide was cleared by the Bureau of Customs. Obviously, Sulpicio’s response doesn’t address the issue.

The government tried to dodge responsibility, too. Transportation Undersecretary Maria Elena Bautista, who concurrently heads Task Force MV Princess of the Stars, said Sulpicio Lines failed to secure a permit from the Coast Guard and to declare that the ill-fated ship had “hazardous material” among its cargoes. The Coast Guard added that ships are supposed to obtain stowage plan clearance from the Philippine Ports Authority. Yet the Princess of the Stars’ manifest showed the pesticide as part of its cargo. So if there was a paper trail which enabled Del Monte to figure out that its shipment was on a ship other than the one that was supposed to carry it, why did the authorities still have to be alerted by Del Monte about the cargo’s presence on the ill-fated ship?

One thing sure for now is that the tangle of red tape left the primarily concerned agencies ignorant of the presence of an item, a fact that they should have known from the start and that they should have factored in all their operations at the wreck.

On the other hand, the “discovery” of the hazardous cargo gives the impression among many Filipinos that, after the sinking of MV Princess of the Stars, the primary preoccupation of Sulpicio Lines is not the well-being of the passengers’ families or the divers or seaside residents, but the maximization of the insurance payout from the wreck. Faced with a proposal to refloat the capsized vessel, the company balked, some say, because it might reduce the insurance payments it will receive—payments that have already predetermined the liabilities it is prepared to assume as far as its doomed passengers’ families are concerned.

Is the public to blame for thinking that all along Sulpicio Lines views every journey of every vessel as a gamble—with the odds stacked in the company’s favor, as against those its passengers have to face? (Inquirer News Service)