By Raffique Shah
July 25, 2026
I am a man who has always identified as what we in the armed forces would describe as Land-Forces. This is not because I was a soldier, but more so because of my deep respect for the sea and all water courses.
As a child growing up I lost cousins and close friends to the seas. So, when my children were younger, we would frequent Maracas and Mayaro and the standing rules were: no bathing in water above knee-height, and no bathing without adult supervision. I could not swim until age 18 when I entered the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. Swimming was a required skill for entry into the Academy, and if you didn’t pass the basic tests, you simply did not graduate. I was a most willing student of bold Major Baggerly who took me and a few others under his wings and every Saturday ritually, after the 10 a.m. parade, we would head for the Academy’s swimming pool where we spent about two hours learning to swim. This was a challenge not only for me and the Major, but for all boys who couldn’t swim because those who could made fun of us. From then on, I never feared the water, but I held a healthy respect for it.
Many moons ago on one of my visits to Guyana, I along with my friends had to ride a ferry taking us from a dock near Georgetown up to the Essequibo. When I saw the vessel, I became concerned immediately. As I said before, I am “Land-Forces”. The vessel hardly looked seaworthy. It was old, rickety, and of questionable usage. When we stepped on board, the noises that accompanied this vessel were enough for your stomach to sink with fear, but since everyone else seemed comfortable, I had to batten down on my inhibitions.
What alarmed me was the fact that the vessel was packed to capacity with people, and they were adding more cargo before they set sail. I all but jumped off the ferry in a panic because self-preservation is only human. By then, though, I had become a strong swimmer having swum for hours in the waters off Teteron and Staubles Bay.
The tragedy that occurred in Guyana just about a week ago, resulting in around 100 adults and children losing their lives, has shaken the entire region and will certainly trigger some drastic changes in our maritime operations. Whether it be enforcing the current regulations or adding new laws or standards of operation, steps must be taken to ensure such a tragedy does not occur again.
We are a maritime region comprising many islands, with interconnectivity being paramount to daily functioning. In Trinidad and Tobago, we have our inter-island ferry service, and we also have a ferry service between our two major cities. I have never been on any of our ferries but I am told that standard operating procedures are strictly adhered to in order to avoid such disasters from occurring.
Back to Guyana, though: the ferry was severely overloaded with what might have been twice the carrying capacity, both for human and other cargo. Not to mention, the ferry was over 80 years old. The kind of maintenance required for a vessel that old would be extensive and expensive when compared with newer vessels. The downtime alone would be longer than usual. I am no engineer or ship expert, for that matter, so I cannot pronounce on the seaworthiness of vessels, but like any average man, I can question it based on its age alone.
Maritime operations are critical to economies and travel, especially for the poorer sections in society—as I assume would have been the case for most, if not all, shipping in Guyana, because nobody would willingly travel by boat for 12 hours if they could afford air travel. And that is just within the country, not external to it.
You find that tragedies such as these generally affect the poorer people because better cannot be afforded or may be unavailable to many. I suppose my questions here would linger more on the treatment of Guyana’s less fortunate by their government.
As a government, President Irfaan Ali and his People’s Progressive Party do not look very progressive in the aftermath of this disaster. You have purchased many new vessels, your roads are being paved and new routes are being developed. Your country is coming out of the Dark Ages with a bang. Money is flowing as it never did before.
Tell me, why did they think it necessary to keep a fossil of a vessel operational? One would think that the government of Guyana thinks very little of its poorer classes. What we hope for now is that the region will learn from this tragedy and improve upon our maritime laws, rules, regulations and, most importantly, make sure they are strictly adhered to.