At least 50 people drowned and about 35 were reported missing after a boat accident on a river in the northwest of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the Equateur province government said on Friday.
The vessel — which was wrecked late on Tuesday — was carrying at least 200 passengers and “up to yesterday [Thursday] we counted 115 survivors and 50 bodies fished from the water with difficulty,” a spokesperson said.
“The others are certainly lost or were dragged down by the water.”
The large motorised barge — which was also carrying goods — collided during the night with an empty whaleboat on the Tshuapa river, 115km east of the provincial capital Mbandaka, spokesperson Rebecca Ebale Nguma said.
“The boat’s manifesto indicated that 200 people were on board, but some of the survivors say there were about 350 people,” Nguma added.
The United Nations force’s local mission in Mbandaka also spoke of at least 50 dead but the central government in Kinshasa would only confirm that 115 survivors had been rescued.
The doomed vessel had left Mbandaka for a market near the town of Boende, almost 300km from the provincial capital. The shipwreck took place 6km from the town of Ingende.
Nguma was unable to say precisely when the boat left Mbandaka but she reckoned that the journey to Boende takes about a day.
“Often they leave at night because the traders want to avoid paying taxes and they don’t want to be troubled” by the services running the ports, the spokesperson added.
Overloading boats is one of the main causes of the many shipwrecks in the vast central African country which is studded with lakes and rivers.
The mighty Congo river itself is one of the main transport routes.
Accidents are also caused by the bad or absent signposting of waterways, the inexperience of pilots and the lack of lights on boats. Many vessels carry no lifebelts or lifejackets.
After a spate of accidents on waterways at the end of April and early in May, Transport Minister Marie-Laure Kawanda was sacked from her post.
The government in Kinshasa stressed that, prior to her sacking, “the transport minister had already banned any nighttime river traffic and the use of wooden whaleboats”.
In June and July, two boats had capsized on the country’s eastern Lake Albert, killing 10 and leaving 40 missing.
In May, abound 100 people were reported missing after an accident in a river in a central region of the DR Congo. — Sapa-AFP