Ship’s 8-hour arrival delay to be probed

The Cebu Station of the Philippine Coast Guard will look into the cause of the 8-hour delay of the arrival of a Cebu-based shipping passenger vessel from Cagayan de Oro City to Pier 5 in Cebu City yesterday.

Commander Agapito Bibat, chief for PCG in Cebu, said the MV Trans Asia 9 was supposed to arrive yesterday at the Cebu City port at 7 a.m., but it instead arrived at 3:28 p.m.

Bibat said that it was scheduled to leave at 8 p.m. last Sunday from the Cagayan de Oro port when its anchor got entangled with the anchor of the Super Shuttle Roro 10.

MV Trans Asia 9 was able to leave the Cagayan de Oro port at almost midnight.

“When they reached within the vicinity of Balicasag Island near Bohol at 5:30 a.m., the vessel encountered an engine problem,” Bibat said in a phone interview.

The passenger vessel arrived at 3:28 p.m. yesterday. There were 614 passengers on board and the ship captain was identified as Galipher Ian Paller.

“Makabantay jud me napalong ang makina kay wala na kay madungog nga tingog gikan niya (We noticed the engine stopped since we couldn’t hear any engine sounds or vibrations),” a male passenger told Cebu Daily News.

The passenger, who is from Cagayan de Oro, said he went home for his weekly visit to his family in Cagayan de Oro and returned yesterday to his work here in Cebu.

He said because of the delay in the arrival of the ship, he was not able to work yesterday.

“There were some passengers who missed their flight. Some of them were not able to go to work,” the passenger claimed.

Another passenger, Ceres Geromo, said that she was worried with what happened.

“What if there were big waves at that time and something happened?” Geromo said.

She, however, said that despite the ship’s problem, the sea was calm and there was no commotion inside the passenger vessel.

Geromo told CDN that she traveled from Cagayan de Oro to Cebu to meet relatives who arrived from the States.

Commander Bibat said that he will ask the ship captain to file a marine protest, where they will base what action to take on the shipping company.

Bibat also said that the Maritime Industry Authority (Marina-7) will also conduct an inspection on the ship, because a vessel is not allowed to sail if it’s not cleared by Marina-7.

Bibat reminded the ship owners and the crew that the “sea-worthiness of the ship” is their responsibility.

“When they encountered the problem, they should have informed us immediately. (But) we received the information about what happened to MV Trans Asia 9 through a text message from a passenger,” Bibat said.