Angel Valdes | January 25, 2023
In an interview with Radio Panama, Captain Juan Maltez, General Director of Seafarers of the Panama Maritime Authority (AMP), explained how our country is working together with Colombia in search operations for the ship that sank in Colombian territorial waters. The last friday.
The tugboat named Sea Voyager with the Tanzanian flag left Cartagena bound for Panama last Friday, but the ship sank with one death and four people missing, three of them Panamanians.
“Since day one that the AMP receives the notification from the ITF through Mr. Miguel Sánchez from Colombia, we have been in constant communication with the relatives, we have held meetings with them in our offices since Friday, explaining all the tasks that have been carried out and those that are going to be carried out, we also had a meeting via video call with the Colombian Navy”
Regarding the joint support provided by the AMP for help in the search together with Colombia, Maltez indicated that “we have worked hand in hand with the Colombian Navy, let’s remember that the search and rescue issue is not searching for the sake of searching but that has some mathematical calculations depending on the wind and currents, in turn we send satellite information to all merchant ships in the area so that they are vigilant, we also send information to the Guna Yala General Congress so that they notify the community if they see any raft or vest inform the authorities and SENAN has deployed a ship that joins the search and a multipurpose vessel that joins the search within our jurisdictional waters.”
One person died in this shipwreck, four crew members managed to save themselves in a raft and were rescued, while four are still missing.
