COTABATO — Navy personnel on Tuesday rescued 121 passengers and crewmen of a small boat that went adrift for six days due to engine trouble while sailing from Zamboanga City to Taganak island town in Tawi-Tawi.
Senior Officials of the Police Regional Office-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region, among them its regional director, Brig Gen. Romeo J. Macapaz, told reporters in Cotabato City on Wednesday that personnel of the Naval Forces Western Mindanao found the missing M/L J Sayang 1 some six nautical miles off the Siklangkalong Island in Tawi-Tawi.
Tawi-Tawi is a component province of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.
Citing initial reports by officials of a Navy unit in Tawi-Tawi, local executives told reporters that the engine of the M/L J Sayang 1 malfunctioned and stalled while sailing near the Pangutaran Island in the province last Jan. 8.
The small boat has no two-way radio, and its crew members rely only on mobile phones to send messages to contacts in the ports in Tawi-Tawi and in Zamboanga City, usable only when near islands that have telecommunications relay towers.
The Navy servicemen who rescued the boat passengers and crewmen using their watercraft, the BRP Jose Loor, Sr., immediately provided them with food and water, according to Tawi-Tawi provincial officials.
The M/L J Sayang 1 was immediately towed to Taganak, also known as Turtle Island, by the BRP Jose Loor, Sr. All passengers reunited with their relatives in the island municipality. — John Felix M. Unson
