The Guyana gov­ern­ment Sun­day night con­firmed that the bod­ies of two peo­ple had been found and the search and res­cue op­er­a­tions con­tin­ue for at least 70 oth­er peo­ple still miss­ing and feared dead af­ter the fer­ry MV Bari­ma cap­sized on Sat­ur­day night as it made its way from George­town to Port Kai­tu­ma, a small vil­lage with­in the Bari­ma-Wai­ni ad­min­is­tra­tive re­gion of the coun­try.

“To the fam­i­lies that are out there who are won­der­ing about their loved ones, we are do­ing every­thing that is hu­man­ly pos­si­ble to find them,” Pub­lic Works Min­is­ter Juan Edghill told a news con­fer­ence as the gov­ern­ment an­nounced that it had launched an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the mishap.

“Since we have this com­pro­mised po­si­tion of the man­i­fest not be­ing a true re­flec­tion of the oc­cu­pants on board, we are kind­ly ask­ing mem­bers of the pub­lic, fam­i­ly mem­bers, who you are aware had rel­a­tives or per­sons who would have jour­neyed, please en­gage us so we’ll be able to have a good grasp of who we are look­ing for so we’ll be able to know how we are man­ag­ing the sit­u­a­tion,” Edghill told re­porters.