SA ferry victims named

2006-03-31 21:24

Johannesburg - Construction company Murray and Roberts Holdings released the names of the South Africans killed in the Bahrain ferry disaster late on Friday afternoon.

They were 47-year-old Chris Braysher who was a commercial manager for the company, 59-year-old Jimmy Allen, design co-ordinator, Lawrence Sulman, 39, project engineer and Allan Jeppe, 51, engineering surveyor.

Twenty-five-year-old Cathy Judd, the partner of one of a Murray & Roberts project worker, was also killed. It was not clear whose partner she was.

Three more Murray and Roberts employees, all from the United Kingdom, were killed.

They were 56-year-old David Evans, a project chairman, 50-year-old Will Nolan who was a project director and Stephen Grady, 42, who was a finishes manager.

"Murray & Roberts executives have today engaged with the families of the deceased employees from South Africa and United Kingdom and will work with them through this period of tragic loss," the company said in a media statement.

"The survivors of the tragedy will also be supported as they come to terms with their own experiences and the loss of friends and colleagues."

Fifty-seven people were killed when a ferry capsized while on a pleasure cruise on Thursday night.

"It's a blow," chief executive Brian Bruce said at a press conference in Johannesburg on Friday.

Employees of Murray and Roberts and its partner, Nass, a professional design team and sub-contractors, had hired the boat to celebrate the topping-out of the concrete structure of the $150m World Trade Centre being built in Bahrain.

They were believed to be among 120 people, excluding crew, on board and were having dinner when disaster struck.

Bruce said he understood that the survivors had minor injuries "or none at all".

Murray and Roberts had 25 direct employees working on the trade centre. Of these, 15 were safe and 10 had died.

The 10 dead included the four South African employees and the South African wife of a project worker, three British workers, a Pakistani and two Indian staff.

- SAPA