Bangladesh's Shipping Minister Akbar Hossain yesterday ordered navigation authorities to seize all river ferries without valid safety certificates, the state-run BSS news agency said.

The minister also told a shippers' meeting in Dhaka not to build any ferry without prior approval of its design by naval architects, it said.

His comments came in the wake of Bangladesh's second-worst ferry disaster, and a day after officials blamed corruption, poor design, a lack of safety equipment and disregard for navigation laws for the country's frequent ferry accidents.

"I am asking the concerned authorities to seize all launches without proper documents and stop building carriers without approved designs," BSS quoted Hossain as saying.

But it did not say when the minister's earlier proposal for the navy to carry out spot checks on ferries, in order to prevent accidents, would become effective.

As many as 500 people may have died when the M.V. Salahuddin-2 went down in the river Meghna during a storm at Shatnal, 170 km from the capital Dhaka on May 3.

Some 370 bodies have been found so far and at least 100 people are missing. The ferry had a maximum capacity of 310 and there were no life-jackets on board, officials said.

Ship operators said it was badly designed and unstable.

"The triple-decked vessel had serious stability problems as its upper deck was wider than the lower decks and it was using only one engine," Captain Mohammad Enayetus Sobhan, president of the Bangladesh Society for Master Mariners, told Reuters.

"Most of the ferries are built in local dockyards without proper supervision and lack safety equipment," Sobhan said.

He said many ferries, although unfit for service, were allowed to run after money changed hands between operators and government officials.

Bangladesh, where some 7,000 ferries carry 300,000 people around the country each day, has only two salvage vessels, bought decades ago.

The country's worst ferry disaster occurred in 1986 when around 600 people died in the Meghna river.

Our Correspondent in Dhaka adds: At least four people were missing after a goods-laden trawler capsized at the estuary of the river Meghna in Bangladesh's southern district of Noakhali last Monday.

A report reaching Dhaka said yesterday the vessel, MV-Maa, was going to Hatiya island from Chittagong and sank after being caught in a nor'wester. The master of the trawler was rescued but the four labourers aboard the vessel remain missing.