PHOTO: Raymond C. Yeon, One of the eleven persons rescued from the sinking boat
By Garmah Never Lomo, garmahlomo@gmail.com
Names are emerging of the eleven people who were rescued from the sunken Niko Ivanka boat by the Liberian Coast Guard and other support crew, with the names of the 11 survivors released, one of them being Mr. Raymond C. Yeon, a former Teacher of the Firestone School System and a staff of the West African Examinations Council (WAEC).
Mr. Yeon is among the eleven survivors who were rescued in Liberian waters between the Port city of Buchanan and Marshall in Montserrado County.
List of the 11 survivors released on Monday:
The Head of the WEAC Monrovia office made the disclosure today, Monday, July 19, 2021.
On Sunday, the Liberia Maritime Authority revealed that the subject vessel that went aground was detained and not allowed to sail.
Commissioner Nagbe said vessel was in fact a cargo boat and was at no time authorized or permitted to carry passengers or operate as a passenger vessel.
At a joint news conference held at the Liberia Maritime Authority headquarters in Monrovia’s Congo Town suburb on Monday, Maritime and Armed Forces of Liberia officials said that the eleven survivors in Saturday’s boat incident was early this morning taken to the John F. Kennedy medical hospital for examination. They are expected to be discharged thereafter.
Rescue efforts are still underway but hopes to find more survivors are said to be fast fading away.
Liberian officials during Monday’s news conference in Monrovia
After well over 39 hours after the sinking of the boat, the between15-17 missing passengers are now beginning to be feared dead.
Maritime Commissioner, Eugene Nagbe told Journalists that they have increases assets in their search and rescue team, in addition to new capacity including images satellite search.
WAEC earlier wanted to airlift staff and materials
For his part, WAEC boss, Dale Gbotoe, in tears, said they had three plans prior to the incident: going by road, plane and water.
According to Mr. Gbotoe, two weeks ago, they chaptered the NAP aircraft to take their test materials alone with their staff but after a week, he was informed by the aircraft authority that most of their parlots came with COVID-19 and they not going again.
So the next option was to go by road but looking at the road situation in the southeastern and also looking at the test time, they decided to make an arrangement with this vessel that sank and it how his staffers along with the testing materials got boarded the vessel, the WAEC boss explained.
Mr. Gbotoe said he will be meeting with the family of his missing staffers to know how they can move forward but asked to the nation to be in prayer with.
He told Journalists that he was never informed by the vessel authority about their detention and their none-safety compliance.
Also the AFL Chief of Staff, Major General Prince Charles Johnson said they have increase their patrol on land as well in identifying the remaining missing passengers and called on towns and villages to report any strange thing they might see.