“We are poor, which is why our deaths are cheap. It only costs LE5 per person to go on a Nile cruise in one of these unauthorised motor boats and risk death from drowning since they don't carry out any safety measures,” said Mohamed Salem, who saw two members of his family drowned in a boat disaster on the Nile last week. Thirty-eight people, many of them women and children, died from drowning when their motor boat sank on Wednesday night following its collision with a barge in the Al-Warraq district in Giza. The number of the dead is not final, as further bodies may be retrieved from the Nile. According to members of the victims' families, there are still other people missing. Hisham Ibrahim, who lost his pregnant wife and a daughter, said that his wife Marwa's body was still missing. “The corpse of my daughter Haneen was recovered from the Nile, but the body of my pregnant wife is still missing even though six days have passed since the accident,” Ibrahim told Al-Ahram Weekly. “Where are the frogmen? Her simple right is for us to bury her and that's why I urge president Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi to help us find my wife's corpse. During the first two days after the accident, the fishermen were the ones who were mainly retrieving the bodies. All our family members are waiting for her body to be found,” Ibrahim said. According to the health ministry, 11 bodies were recovered early last Friday, while later on the same day another nine were retrieved from the Nile. “No state officials have called us or even visited the site of the drowning where we are searching for the sixth successive day,” Ibrahim added. The motor boat was celebrating a party on Wednesday night as the family and friends of a recently engaged couple were marking the happy event by going on a Nile cruise that turned into a tragedy. Most of the passengers were family members and neighbours from the same neighbourhood. On Thursday, Al-Ahram reported that the families and friends of the deceased and missing had blocked a road in the Al-Warraq district and angrily chanted anti-government slogans. Government spokesperson Hossam Qawish said at the weekend that the cabinet would issue LE60,000 in compensation to the families of all the deceased and would also treat the injured at state expense. All the injured would receive LE5,000, he said. “I don't want compensation. I just want to see my son, whether alive or dead,” Ahmed, a man in his late thirties whose seven-year-old son Othman is still missing in the Nile, said. “There are six dead in my family, including my wife, and all their bodies have been retrieved except that of Othman. I ask president Al-Sisi to help us find him,” Ahmed said. A security source told the Middle East News Agency (MENA) that the driver of the motor boat, aged 20, had been referred to the prosecution authorities for questioning on Sunday after he had turned himself in to police. He has been detained for four days pending investigation. The detained man said he had escaped when the boat started sinking in the Nile, claiming that he had saved several passengers from drowning. According to Ahram Online, he confirmed that the boat was carrying more than its maximum capacity. However, during the investigation he also claimed that he was not the driver, explaining that he only collected fares. The captain of the barge was also arrested and remains in detention pending official investigation. According to the initial investigation, the motor boat was not licensed while the barge lacked lighting and its front lights had been disabled. In the aftermath of the accident, Prime Minister Ibrahim Mehleb ordered the temporary suspension of the chief of the River Transport Bureau, part of the Ministry of Transportation, and the head of the Waterways Police, part of the Interior Ministry. During a meeting early on Sunday attended by Mehleb, the ministers of transport, environment, irrigation, interior and justice met to review the legislation applicable to the management of the Nile, and the prime minister issued a decree banning barges from passing through Cairo from sunset to sunrise until the end of September. He also ordered a halt to issuing new licenses for marine and Nile cargo, as well as prohibiting the use of the loud amplifiers used by motor boats for music on boats carrying passengers on short Nile cruises. The cabinet has advised the Ministry of Irrigation to coordinate with the country's regional governors in preparing a comprehensive safety inventory covering all waterways around the country to be submitted to the cabinet within a week. The cabinet also instructed the transport ministry and the Arab Academy for Science, Technology and Maritime Transport to prepare a short and long-term plan that includes programmes to develop the Nile transportation system that the government will then adopt as a national project. The cabinet has agreed to review river transport legislation, stiffen penalties for violators, and ensure that all river boats adhere to the rules. One of these rules is that all passengers must wear life jackets. The interior ministry represented by the Waterways Police launched an extensive campaign on Monday targeting Nile boats in order to prevent “illegal and unwanted behaviour,” to inspect and review drivers, and to fine violations. Because Egypt is sandwiched between two seas, the Red Sea and the Mediterranean Sea, and has the River Nile running through it, boat accidents have not been uncommon. An earlier incident occurred in April when a barge carrying 500 tons of phosphate capsized in Qena in Upper Egypt. Last year, six people including a child were drowned when their motor boat collided with a bridge near downtown Cairo. However, the deadliest accident took place in 2006 when the Egyptian ferry Al-Salam sank in the Red Sea 40 miles off the port of Safaga after sailing from Saudi Arabia leaving at least 1,000 people dead, almost all of them pilgrims returning from the Hajj. Following the sinking of the Al-Salam ferry, concerns about safety were similarly raised.
