Philippine ferry search halted

The search for hundreds of bodies feared trapped on a capsized passenger in the central Philippines has been postponed until this week while officials try to remove 10 tonnes of toxic pesticide from the vessel.

"We want to target to get the cargo out by Wednesday at the latest. If we can get the job done tomorrow or Tuesday, so much the better," Elena Bautista, the head of a government taskforce handling the aftermath of the ferry disaster, said yesterday.

"Once the endosulfan is removed, that's the only time the search operations for survivors and bodies can resume."

MV Princess of the Stars ran aground on June 21 during a typhoon and then overturned in about 15 minutes off Sibuyan island in the central Philippines. The vessel had 865 passengers and crew. Painstaking efforts by Philippine and US divers to retrieve bodies from the seven-storey ship were abruptly halted on Friday after authorities learned 400 boxes of endosulfan, a highly toxic pesticide, were on board.

Officials said yesterday that water samples taken from the sea off Sibuyan island showed there had been no contamination but a fishing ban around the area was maintained.

Local communities were relying even more on the sea to survive after Typhoon Fengshen tore up coconut trees and destroyed corn and cassava crops when it hurled through the centre of the country last weekend.

"This is a big tragedy for our seas and we depend on our seas for our livelihood," said Nanette Tansingco, a local mayor. "What will happen to us here?"

The overall death toll from the typhoon could top 1,300, including 540 people killed in a torrent of flooding that tore up trees and bridges, destroyed homes and forced over two million people to evacuate.

Damage to agriculture and infrastructure was pegged at nearly seven billion pesos ($156 million).

The discovery of a toxic chemical on board a passenger ferry was a grim reminder of how standards are flouted in the Philippines, an archipelago of more than 7,000 islands with a woeful record in maritime safety.

It also raises the heat on the ship's owner Sulpicio Lines, already under fire for allowing the vessel to sail when a typhoon had hit.