Mozambique’s Minister of Transport and Communications announced this Monday that authorities are “reflecting” on the sinking on Sunday of a fishing boat carrying more than 130 people, which killed at least 98 people.
According to Matheus Magal, this reflection serves to ensure that “this never happens again.” The minister was speaking in Nampula during a meeting with authorities in the northern province to review an incident involving an overcrowded fishing boat bound for Ilha de Mozambique, Nampula province.
“Thinking about what happened, what shouldn’t happen and how we’re going to position ourselves from now on so that what happened doesn’t happen again. We are all here to reflect,” Magala said.
There is a need to “exchange views on what happened and what should not happen in the future,” insisted a government official, expressing solidarity with the families affected by the disaster.
According to Mozambican maritime authorities, the fishing vessel did not have permission to carry passengers and was not capable of doing so.
According to the same source, the people he was transporting were fleeing a cholera outbreak on the mainland and heading to the island of Mozambique.
Mozambican authorities today updated the death toll from 91 to 98 following a shipwreck that occurred on Sunday in Nampula province in northern Mozambique.
“At the moment we have a total of 98 dead, 13 survivors, the rest missing. There were about 130 people on this ship,” said Rosa, a spokeswoman for the Police of the Republic of Mozambique (PRM) in Nampula province. – Lusa Chauke said.
The victims died when the overcrowded ship sank as it left the administrative center of Lunga for the island of Mozambique, a PRM spokesman said in a report submitted to Luse.
“It was just a fishing boat, a vessel that could not accommodate as many people as it was carrying. The search is still ongoing,” he added.
Local reports say victims, including children and entire families, are being buried immediately due to a lack of facilities to preserve the bodies.
The president of the Mozambican National Resistance (Renamo, opposition), Ossufo Momade, expressed this Monday “deeply shocked” by the death of at least 98 people as a result of the sinking of a fishing boat off the island of Mozambique, calling for national mourning.
“We demand that the government declare national mourning and that this moment be recognized by the authorities as another sign of negligence and lack of public safety,” Ossufo Momade wrote on his official Facebook account.
“We were very touched and concerned to learn that the vessel in question was a fishing vessel and was not designed to carry people, which made us think about the need for maritime safety,” added the leader of Mozambique’s largest opposition party.
Former Mozambican President Armando Guebuza also expressed “deep concern” about the accident.
“We express our deepest condolences to the families of the victims,” wrote Guebuza, who was in power for a decade until 2015.
Author: Lusa
Source: CM Jornal
I am Michael Melvin, an experienced news writer with a passion for uncovering stories and bringing them to the public. I have been working in the news industry for over five years now, and my work has been published on multiple websites. As an author at 24 News Reporters, I cover world section of current events stories that are both informative and captivating to read.