Seventy-four-year-old Chang Lien-chao (
One year after their loved ones went missing, the families of the 21 seamen, along with legislators and labor rights activists yesterday, attacked the government for its handling of the matter and urged it to improve maritime safety.
"It has been a year, and nobody has taken it seriously," said Ku Yu-ling (
On Feb. 28 last year, the 4,000-tonne Hualien No. 1, a bulk carrier with a cargo of 5,300 tonnes of gravel, departed Hualien for a 14-hour voyage to Tamsui, on Taiwan's northern coast.
It never arrived.
No distress signal was received from its automatic mayday transmitters, which the ship's owner claimed were fully operational. Neither debris or a fuel slick were found. The ship had passed a safety inspection two weeks before.
Maritime experts said it was unlikely that the 16-year-old, secondhand vessel would be of interest to pirates.
"These 21 families are on the verge of collapse," said Fann Lie-pyng (
Fann's 5th-grade child has often written down Chou's name in silent reminiscence. Chang Chih-yun (章志筠), wife of the vessel's radio operator, Han Kuo-chi (韓國基), lost the family's source of income and had to find a job. "She went to work at a restaurant, but was soon laid off ... Then Chang, a Christian, ended up working in a Buddhist temple," Fann told the Taipei Times.
"But we are here to demonstrate our determination never to give up ... Whether the ship sank or was hijacked by pirates, our search effort will never stop as long as the crew remains unaccounted for," Fann added.
Reviewing the chronology of events, People First Party legislator Lee Ching-an (
"Twenty days passed after the disappearance of the ship before the Ministry of Transportation and Communications (MOTC) instructed the Ministry of National Defense's Taipei Rescue and Coordination Center to take over the search and rescue mission," Lee said.
Lee blasted the MOTC for demanding one of its agencies, Hualien Harbor Bureau, produce an investigative report, saying such an effort amounted only to paper pushing and the agency was powerless to coordinate the relevant ministries to produce such a report. Although the bureau completed a report last August, Lee said the document was simply "full of nonsense."
Moreover, the Executive Yuan, after receiving a petition last September from family members, legislators and human rights groups, ordered the MOTC to complete a full report by the end of last year which never materialized, the legislator said. "Has the MOTC finished the report yet? The answer is no. The whole business remains a big question mark," Lee said.
Chang accused government officials of "mindlessness" in handling the issue. Almost one year after the incident, staffers from the Coast Guard Administration, which had been involved in search and rescue work, began to interview family members of the missing crew, asking "irrelevant" questions such as how long her son had worked on the vessel, Chang said.
Meanwhile, Ocean Researcher II, a boat used by National Taiwan Ocean University, detected a massive metal object on the sea bed northeast of Cape Fukui near Tamsui last September. But follow-up searches by the Navy showed that the object was not the wreckage of Hualien No 1.
The MOTC authorized the National Taiwan Ocean University in December to carry out search and investigation work in connection with the mysterious disappearance using specialized search vessels provided by the coast guard. Its report is scheduled to be completed by the end of August.
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