Ship disaster compensation inadequate, say activists

Compensation offered to survivors and families of victims of the Al-Salam Boccaccio 98 ferry disaster, in which more than 1,000 people died on 3 February, is being inadequately distributed, according to Egyptian human rights activists. To date, the Al-Salam company, which owned the vessel, has promised the families of victims US $26,170 each and survivors $2,617 each. “We may be a developing country, but the compensation on offer is still far from sufficient,” said Moataz Billah Osman, researcher at the Arab Organisation for Human Rights. The passenger ferry sank in the Red Sea while on route from the Saudi Arabian town of Duba to the Egyptian port city of Safaga, located some 450 km southeast of the capital, Cairo. Of the 1,414 travellers on board, only 387 survived the disaster. Activists blamed both insurance companies and the Al-Salam Maritime Transport Company for failing to consider victims’ particular economic requirements, and called for a larger government role in monitoring the companies’ progress towards a settlement. They maintained that Egypt was compelled by international agreements to do so. “The Al-Salam company is bound by international treaties to duly compensate the victims,” said Yasser Fathi, a lawyer representing victims’ families. Fathi noted that the current compensation programme did not take into account individual needs of families or cover losses caused by the deaths of migrant workers. “The very nature of compensation requires that it should cover losses incurred by an accident,” he said. “The company’s strategy doesn’t take individual factors into consideration,” Fathi stressed. “Instead, it indicates that the insurance companies covering it have merely split an available budget at random over the numbers affected.” Such distribution, he pointed out, fails to take into account several relevant factors, such as the number of dependants of a given victim. Critics also point to the fact that, under the scheme, female members of victims’ families will receive less than male members. “Nowhere in Islamic [law] or Egyptian civil code does it stipulate that compensation handed to a given family be split along gender lines,” said Fathi. At the same time, however, activists commended recent government promises of additional financial assistance. Based on a presidential decree announced on Saturday, victims’ families will be given $6,316 each, while survivors will receive $3,158 each. According to Osman, the government is not bound by law to hand out such assistance. “President Hosni Mubarak’s decision must be qualified as a positive step,” said Fathi. Nevertheless, he added that the Ministry of Insurance and Social Affairs had not yet ordered a full investigation of the Al-Salam Maritime Transport Company, even though such a move constituted a fundamental right of survivors and families of victims. “The insurance ministry hasn’t yet fulfilled its role,” Fathi said. Ministry officials were unavailable for comment.