Port authority calls for more ferries to transport long line of vehicles to Tacloban

MATNOG, Sorsogon—The Philippine Port Authority is appealing for more roll-on-roll-off ferries to transport hundreds of vehicles that have formed a six-kilometer-long queue to make the sea crossing from here to the port of Allen in Northern Samar en route to Tacloban City and other places devastated by last week’s supertyphoon.

Carol Mendizabal, division manager of the PPA in Matnog, said the port has eight vessels making 10 to 14 departures a day.

The lack of ferries going to Samar and Leyte has kept people waiting outside the port area on Maharlika Highway in Barangay Caloocan for a day or so.

“The line is increasing by the day because of this extraordinary event. Imagine we have only four working ramps and eight vessels,” she said.

From 2,500 passengers on a normal day, the number has risen to up to 6,500 a day since Super typhoon Yolanda flattened and isolated cities on the islands of Samar and Leyte.

“We need more vessels. We ask the private shipping companies to send more seacraft so we can accommodate our private clients and the government and non-government agencies on relief missions to Samar and Leyte,” Mendizabal told the Inquirer.

The long waiting hours at the port area have irked individuals desperate to get a ride to the Visayas.

“We have medicines and food with us too!” a woman shouted upon seeing teams of the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority on retrieval and relief missions to Guiuan and Basey in Eastern Samar and Palo, Leyte asking port officials to put them on their priority list.

She said her grandfather and relatives in Tacloban were in dire need of food, water, and medicine.

The seaport in Matnog, Sorsogon, is the only gateway to Visayas from Luzon since all airports in Samar and Leyte have remained closed to commercial flights.

Mendizabal said the Department of Transportation and Communications and the Marine Industry Authority have promised them two additional vessels from Masbate and Batangas on Tuesday.

“We appeal to shippers who have benevolent hearts to deploy additional vessels dedicated for relief missions,” he said.

Some agencies and organizations carrying relief goods like the MMDA, Department of Social Welfare and Development, and the Philippine Red Cross  had to wait for five to 12 hours to board the ferry to Samar and Leyte.