Tuesday, June 24, 2008 Editorials: Dealing with the latest sea mishap
THE altercation yesterday morning between guards of the Sulpicio Lines office in Quezon City and relatives of the passengers of mv Princess of the Stars is not surprising.
This is not the first time sea mishaps like this happened, so the management of the shipping firm should have prepared a system better than the one in place yesterday.
The impatience of people trooping to the Sulpicio offices in Quezon and in Cebu stem from the need for updates on the result of the search and the condition of their kin.
The need of relatives is simple: they want to know who among the more than 700 passengers and more than a hundred crew members survived, died or are missing.
Being upfront and reassuring is what is needed now.
Assistance
It’s good that social welfare people are in the Sulpicio offices to help deal with the victims’ families and local government officials are giving other forms of assistance.
But government people can only do so much, especially in the task of updating worried relatives on the search—that is something best handled by Sulpicio employees.
The key then is for the shipping firm’s spokespersons to face the victims’ kin as often as possible and not talk only with the media or worse make themselves scarce.
Search and rescue
Meanwhile, efforts at this stage must be poured more on the search and rescue operation and in constantly updating the public on its result and less on blame-throwing.
There will be time for that after everybody is already convinced that nobody has been left out in the open sea or even inside the capsized ship by the rescuers.
Besides, the blame-throwing won’t go anywhere at this point when the Maritime Industry Authority has still to form a body to conduct a formal probe on the sinking.
And considering the usual conduct of government investigations, it will take time for an objective picture of what happened to mv Princess of the Stars will form.
Focus
To be sure, those to blame for this tragedy should be pinpointed and if possible made to pay for the loss of lives, which incidentally included a good number of children.
But that should not distract those concerned from the task of the moment: save those still alive, look for the missing, identify the dead and constantly update the public of the situation.
