No fewer than than twenty-six people were declared missing on Sunday morning after a ferry ran out of fuel and sank in bad weather off the coast of Indonesia, officials confirmed.
The country’s search and rescue agency disclosed that the vessel was conveying about 43 people when it capsized in the Makassar Strait, the sea separating the islands of Sulawesi and Borneo.
Africa Daily News, New York gathered that the news of the accident only reached officials on Saturday, the local head of search and rescue Djuanidi, who like many Indonesians goes by only one name, told reporters.
Read Also: Indonesia-Nigeria Trade Volume Reaches 2.46b Dollars
He went on to point out that; ‘Seventeen people have been rescued alive by two tugboats that were passing by. We have deployed a rescue team to search for the missing others’.
A group of 40 rescuers were at sea searching for survivors, Djuanidi added.
Africa Daily News, New York reports that Marine accidents are common in Indonesia, a Southeast Asian archipelago of around 17,000 islands where safety standards are often lax.
Last week a ferry carrying more than 800 people ran aground in shallow waters off East Nusa Tenggara province and remained stuck for two days before being dislodged. No one was hurt.
In 2018 more than 150 people drowned when a ferry sank in one of the world’s deepest lakes on Sumatra island.
Meanwhile,Trade volume between Indonesia and Nigeria reached 2.46 billion dollars between 2016 and 2021, says Amb. Usra Harahap, Ambassador of Indonesia to Nigeria.
Harahap said this on Tuesday in Abuja while fielding questions from newsmen, when he said about 25 Indonesian companies had invested in Nigeria.
He said trade between the two countries kept increasing in the last six years.
