Public anger over the MV Barima tragedy intensified on Wednesday, July 29, as protests erupted across Guyana, with hundreds of citizens taking to the streets demanding justice for the 73 victims, the release of the three Transport and Harbours Department employees charged with murder, and the resignation of Public Works Minister Juan Edghill and Minister within the Ministry of Public Works Deodat Indar.

The coordinated demonstrations, which spanned Georgetown, Den Amstel on the West Coast of Demerara and Melanie Damishana on the East Coast Demerara, came a day after the joint opposition-parliamentarians and non-parliamentarians-  staged a protest outside the Arthur Chung Conference Centre during the sitting of the National Assembly on July 28, where similar calls were made for political accountability over the country’s deadliest maritime disaster in decades.

Carrying photographs of those who perished and others who remain unaccounted for, protesters chanted, “Jail the criminals, free the innocent,” and “Who must go? Edghill and Indar must go,” among other call-and-response slogans, while expressing the view that frontline workers were being scapegoated as senior officials responsible for the ferry service escaped accountability.