Bad Transport System Blamed In Haiti Ferry Deaths

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - Critics blamed a rundown transport system that treats people like "sacks of cornmeal and rice" for this week's capsizing and sinking of the overcrowded ferry Neptune.

More than 200 bodies were recovered by yesterday, following Tuesday's sinking. Between 800 and 2,000 passengers, along with livestock, charcoal and sacks of produce, were aboard.

The ferry went down in a storm after hundreds of panicked passengers rushed to one side to take cover from the rain, reports said.

More than 300 people are known to have survived, the Haitian navy said. The vessel was on a scheduled 120-mile run from the southwestern port of Jeremie to Port-au-Prince, the capital.

Most of the passengers on the trip, which takes 12 to 18 hours and costs the equivalent of $7, were poor peasants who lived in or near Jeremie and were heading to market in the capital.

Critics said the sinking was the latest in a long line of tragedies in a country where bad roads force people to rely on unsafe sea travel.

In addition, many ships and buses have been idled in recent months because of a lack of spare parts. All imported goods have become scarce because of an embargo against Haiti following a September 1991 army coup.

Haitian transport companies, on land and at sea, "do not consider that they are transporting human beings," civil-defense worker Bois Rond Pascal said. And bus lines and boat companies have been systematically permitted to ignore government regulations for years, he charged.

"People are not sacks of cornmeal and rice, but are treated as if they were," he said.

Survivors said the 163-foot, steel-hull ferry Neptune was not equipped with life jackets or lifeboats.

The captain of the port at Port-au-Prince hinted that charges may be filed against the ferry's captain, Julio Antoine, and its owner, Carmin Magloire.

The owner, Magloire, was quoted as telling a local newspaper that 750 tickets had been sold Tuesday before the boat set sail from Jeremie to Port-au-Prince.

But because a later ferry had been canceled, 150 people desperate to sail overwhelmed guards and clambered aboard the craft, Magloire said.

Magloire was aboard the ship when it went over. He said he swam 11 hours to shore.