Reports of maritime mishaps will be more carefully verified to prevent future tragedies after inaccurate information prematurely halted efforts to rescue crewmembers of a sinking Taiwanese fishing boat, an official said yesterday.
Council of Agriculture Minister Chen Wu-hsiung (陳武雄) made the pledge following Monday’s incident, which started when Taipei County-based fishing boat -Changshunfa 1620 reported a fire aboard a ship off the outlying island of Matsu at 5pm.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Lee Ching-hua (李慶華) said a coast guard -vessel arrived on the scene at about 6:53pm to search for the ship’s eight crew, but it left just more than an hour later after receiving a report from China saying the crew had been rescued.
Photo: CNA
However, Taiwanese authorities received further information from China at about 11pm indicating that the rescue report was a mistake and that the fishing boat had sunk, leaving three dead and five missing, Lee said.
The lawmaker from Taipei County asked Chen at a legislative hearing whether the Council of Agriculture and the Fisheries Agency had gained a clear picture of the overall situation to begin with.
In response, Chen said there was room for improvement in dealing with reports about fishing boat mishaps.
“The two sides of the Taiwan Strait have established communication channels for search and rescue operations in the event of maritime accidents. Nevertheless, relevant information should be more stringently and accurately verified in the future,” Chen said.
“If possible, the council will demand that rescuers converse with fishery workers or crew members who reportedly have been rescued before deciding whether to discontinue search operations,” he said.
Fisheries Agency Director Sha Chih-yi (沙志一), who expressed regret over the mishap at the hearing, said that after the agency received word the crew members had in fact not been rescued, it asked coast guard authorities to continue with the search operations.
He also acknowledged that the information gathering process was flawed.
The Fisheries Agency has offered money to compensate the families of the deceased crew and will help them with insurance compensation claims.
The dead were listed as the ship’s skipper and first engineer, who were Taiwanese, and a Chinese fisherman.
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