Despite assurances that bodies retrieved from Tuesday’s deadly boat collision on the Mazaruni River would have been properly stored and transported, that was not the case on Thursday when two more bodies were retrieved.
Transport Minister Robeson Benn on Wednesday had declared that unlike the massacres in Bartica where the bodies were just dumped on a boat and not properly prepared before being sent out of the mining area, the same would not have been for the victims of the boat crash.
He explained that already body bags were procured and that the bodies when recovered will be placed in body bags before leaving Bartica.
However, neither of the two bodies recovered from the Mazaruni arrived at Parika in body bags.
Those recovered on Thursday are Christopher Narine 21 of Parika Façade and Zahir Baksh 35 of Kane Ville, East Bank Demerara The bodies of the men arrived at the Parika Police Station just after 11 AM but it was only after 3 PM that they were removed and taken to the Lyken Funeral Parlour in the city.
Narine’s aunt, Debbie, told Demerara Waves Online News (www.demwaves.com) that she last saw her nephew five days before he went into the riverain community. She explained that he went to work with her cousin who operates a cargo boat from Parika to communities beyond Bartica.
Meanwhile the relatives of Baksh expressed much dissatisfaction that the bodies had to lay at the location for such lengthy period. One relative,who did not give his name added that they approached the police and suggested that they would have taken up the responsibility to have the body transported to wherever the police needed it to go. However. that suggestion was rejected by the police, the man said.
“Deez bodies come here since morning and just deh here all de time, we tell de police dat we could take it to parlour and dem tell we is a police matter and we can't move it" a male relative of Singh said.
On Thursday afternoon the police were forced to lock the gates of the Parika police station as the hearse arrived to have the bodies taken away. Persons flocked the gateways and even glued themselves to the chain-link fence to get a glimpse of the bodies which were covered in tarpaulin.
The recovery of Narine and Singh brings to four the number of bodied retrieved from the river near the scene of the accident. The bodies of Jermaine Calistro of West Demerara and Ulric Grimes of Salem, Parika have been already found.
Operation Hawkeye, which includes representatives of the Maritime Administration, Region 7 administration and the police and defence forces, are now looking out for the five remaining bodies of two Brazilians and two brothers- Ricky Bobb and and Keanu Amsterdam-and a Bartician identified only as “Tallman".
The accident occurred Tuesday afternoon when the two high-powered boats collided in the vicinity of Crab Falls, about 25 miles up the Mazaruni River from Bartica.
Friday 25 Janaury 2013
http://www.demerarawaves.com/index.php/201301245374/Latest/body-storage-plan-for-mazaruni-boat-collision-victims-flops.html
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