HARARE – Supreme Court judge Justice Joseph Mafusire has been handed the task of finding out how a ferry came to go down on Lake Kariba on August 11, taking 97 lives with it.
He will lead a three-member panel of inquiry whose brief runs from the way the vessel was loaded and operated to the way it was cleared to sail. Wiklef Makamache and Patronella Musarurwa complete the panel, with the permanent secretary in the ministry of transport and infrastructural development, Joy Makumbe, serving as its secretary.
Transport minister Felix Mhona appointed the board through a notice in the Government Gazette on Friday, in terms of the Inland Waters Shipping Act. The inquiry has three months to deliver, with room for a one-month extension.
Preliminary investigations have indicated that the vessel, which belonged to the Rural Infrastructure Development Agency, may have been overloaded in bad weather.
“The inquiry may be held either in public or privately, as the exigencies of the inquiry may determine,” reads the notice, which also requires a report once the work is done.
The loading of the vessel is the key area of investigation. The board must establish how much cargo and how many people were on board, whether the crew was sufficient in number and adequate in skill, and whether the ferry stayed within its prescribed limits for passengers and cargo. It must also pin down the exact number of people aboard when the vessel capsized, a figure the notice leaves for the inquiry to settle.
Its wider terms of reference are sweeping. The board must establish the nature, circumstances and causes of the disaster, and examine the vessel’s worthiness, registration, certification, fitness and compliance with safety requirements. It will also look at the suitability, certification and competence of everyone involved in procuring, owning, operating, controlling and navigating the ferry, as well as the actions of the authorities responsible for regulating inland water transport.
The probe stretches along the entire inland water transport chain, from weather controls and security certification to vessel operations, navigation and regulatory oversight. Investigators will test whether the correct procedures were followed before, during and after the voyage, particularly those governing safety, normal vessel operations and search-and-rescue efforts.
Beyond the immediate circumstances of the disaster, the board will ask a harder question: whether the country’s systems for regulating inland water transport are up to the job. It will examine the structural, institutional, administrative and legislative frameworks governing inland shipping and recommend to government whatever reforms it considers necessary.
To do so, it has been empowered to conduct site visits, summon witnesses, record proceedings and testimonies, and gather and assess any information relevant to the inquiry, before submitting its findings and recommendations to the minister.
Source: Justice Mafusire to lead inquiry into Kariba ferry disaster that killed 97 – Zimbabwe News Now
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