Bad weather hits desperate Indonesia ferry search

PARE-PARE, Indonesia (Reuters) - Scores of passengers on an Indonesian ferry that sunk at the weekend were not on the manifest, an official said on Tuesday, compounding confusion over the number of missing as bad weather hampered search efforts.

The ferry, which had 250 passengers and 17 crew according to the manifest, was traveling from Pare-Pare on the west coast of Sulawesi to Samarinda city on Indonesia's side of Borneo island when it ran into heavy seas on Sunday.

Since then, there has been little change in the grim weather hampering the search and growing indications that there may have been more people on board than the official tally.

"We are still searching for anything afloat. So far we have 35 survivors and two dead," said Teddy Sutedjo, director of operations and training at the national search and rescue agency.

The official said that passengers who were asleep in cabins when the boat overturned in the early hours of Sunday would have had little chance of escape. He put the sea depth at 500 meters (1,640 ft) in the Makassar Strait where the boat went down.

With a south-flowing current, the search was focused on a cluster of islands to the south of the stricken vessel, in case survivors made it to shore, he added.

Earlier, Taufik Bulu, head of maritime safety in Pare-Pare, had said the weather was hampering the search.

"The wind is strong and right now it has been raining heavily. This is a problem," added Bulu, who said that seven ships had been deployed in the search effort.

Local TV footage showed an exhausted looking man being plucked from the sea by a rescue vessel.

One survivor, Muhammad Yusuf, was found by fisherman after clinging to three clusters of bananas for 27 hours in rough seas, the Jakarta Post reported.

Transport Ministry spokesman Bambang Ervan also said the weather was impeding the search.

"Today we continued the search, but air surveillance has been delayed, even the plane the transport minister boarded had to return due to bad weather," said Ervan.

INVESTIGATION

Officials have denied that the ten-year-old Teratai Prima ferry was overloaded, but there appeared to be growing confusion over exactly who was on the vessel.

Sutedjo said the manifest showed 250 names but investigation so far showed that 88 people who were believed to have been on board the ferry were not on the list.

"Maybe there are some people that used somebody else's name to get on board," he said.

Transport Minister Jusman Syafi'i Djamal said on Monday that a preliminary investigation showed the ferry capsized on Sunday after it was hit by waves, but there would be an investigation into why the captain set sail despite warnings about bad weather.

After a spate of air and sea disasters in recent years, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono vowed to remedy the situation and Djamal, appointed in 2007, promised a drastic shake-up of the sector with a "roadmap to zero accidents".

Spending has been increased, but the minister admitted on Monday there was some way to go and that in the maritime sector only 40-50 percent of planned improvements were in place.

"There is more to be done. What we haven't done is to establish a harbour master authority, to advise how to manage ports and shipping routes."

(Additional reporting by Telly Nathalia and Olivia Rondonuwu in Jakarta; Writing by Ed Davies; Editing by Valerie Lee)