Sulpicio told: ‘Don’t give us false hopes!’
By Jerome Aning
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 05:39:00 06/25/2008
MANILA, Philippines—“Don’t speak as though you’re buying our relatives with your money.”
“Don’t give us false hopes!”
It was as though Edgardo Go, president of Sulpicio Lines Inc., had absorbed the wrath of an entire nation shaken by the fourth major disaster involving Sulpicio ships.
Three days after deadly waves capsized his company’s MV Princess of the Stars, Go faced relatives of the missing passengers for the first time Tuesday and was mobbed.
Emerging from the Sulpicio offices at the Manila North Harbor, Go appealed for calm from the information-starved crowd of about 200 people.
Security guards cordoned off Go and other Sulpicio officials as the relatives jostled with mediamen to get near him.
Some relatives booed or hissed, while others peppered Go with questions during the 15-minute face-off. Mostly, he answered with “We are still verifying that.”
“We understand your grief,” “We’re sorry, we feel your loss,” “Please be patient and calm,” “Please bear with us, we’re doing all we can,” Go also said, trying to assure the relatives of compensation for their loss.
He shook the hands of a few, and patted the backs of others.
‘Return our loved ones’
Go also told the relatives that divers had entered the sunken portion of the ship and found bodies. He said all the bodies would be brought to Manila and autopsied by the National Bureau of Investigation.
Earlier, the relatives engaged Sulpicio guards in a shoving match after the guards barred mediamen from talking to them. About a dozen angry relatives, mostly women, suddenly tore through the barricade, burst into the passenger lounge and grabbed a microphone.
“Where are our loved ones? Return them!” one microphone-toting relative said, screaming expletives and denouncing the company’s “incompetence.”
Guards shoved them away later.
Other relatives in the passengers lounge kicked at chairs, broke plant pots and flower vases and tore up company posters.
Some of the calmer relatives proposed that they be taken to the site of the accident off Sibuyan Island. Go nodded but gave no definite answer.
Buried without being identified
“It’s impossible that there’s anybody left alive. It’s been four days. No one’s alive, no one. What we want is to go there and look for our dead,” said Levi Diaz, a relative of one of the missing passengers.
“We want to see the bodies and identify them because we heard that some of the bodies are being buried without identification,” Diaz said.
One Sulpicio official said even if the bodies were buried, pictures were taken and distinguishing marks noted. She said DNA testing could also help identify the dead.
Only 42 names
When Go began talking about compensation, one of the relatives shouted: “Don’t speak like you’re buying our relatives with your money! We want to see our relatives!”
Go apparently did not hear.
So far, the names of only 42 survivors have been posted at the Sulpicio office.
Go explained that updates about search, rescue and retrieval operations were taking a long time to be passed on to the relatives because Sulpicio Lines needed to confirm them with the Philippine Coast Guard.
“Don’t give us false hopes!” another relative butted in.
Others complained that the hotlines set up by Sulpicio were not working. Go promised to attend to that.
Couple tied with rope
A few relatives said that while they may not have given up hope of seeing their loved ones alive, they were ready to accept it if they turned up dead.
“Yes, I can accept it if they’re dead, I told the Lord. But please, I want to see them even if they are corpses,” said Anita Gilbuena, whose 18 relatives were on the ship to attend a family reunion in Cebu.
Hercules Condrillon, a seaman whose father Baltazar and three other relatives were on the ship, approached television reporters to show their pictures. He said he hoped rescue teams could recognize them.
Another sobbing relative, Adelina Dimaranan, said she was sure the bodies of an elderly couple found tied together with a rope and recovered in San Fernando, Romblon, were her parents.
“Two days before they left, my father told me to buy a rope so that he could tie my mother to him in case some accident happened,” Dimaranan said.
“I told Sulpicio about this and said I wanted to go to Romblon to see them but they have not responded to my request,” she said.
Some came home safe
Dimaranan later fainted and was brought to the company’s infirmary for first-aid treatment.
The relatives could just look with something like envy at passengers emerging from another Sulpicio ship, MV Filipina Princess, which docked at Pier 12 around 10:30 a.m.
The ship had come from Surigao City and was one of the last Sulpicio vessels still at sea after the Maritime Industry Authority ordered the grounding of all of the company’s ships.
Mario Romero, who came from Cebu, said he and other passengers were caught by the typhoon near Leyte and took shelter in a cove. He said the ship could have sped to Sibuyan Sea to rescue the Princess of the Stars passengers, but the sea was so choppy.
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