Jakarta - Rescue workers made no progress in their search for more than 230 missing people three days after a passenger ferry capsized in rough seas off the Indonesian province of West Sulawesi, officials said Wednesday.

"We received no report on more survivors or bodies found from the field until mid-day Wednesday," said Junaedi, an official at western Sulawesi port town of Majene, the closest to the ferry's location when it sank.

He said only 35 survivors and two bodies had been found since the ferry sank early Sunday, leaving at least 230 others missing and feared dead.

Junaedi, who like many Indonesians goes by only one name, said the search for survivors from Sunday's ferry disaster was continuing from the sea and air, supported by five warships, marine patrol boats and search and rescue vessels, as well as helicopters and planes.

Meanwhile, about 50 relatives of the missing people protested at the crisis centre in Majene, accusing the rescue workers used bad weather as an excuse for the slow pace of the search operation. The angry protestors had pooled funds to hire fishing boats to launch their own search, reported detik. com online news portal.

The Teratai Prima ferry sank before dawn Sunday in rough seas off the port town of Majene while en route from the port of Pare-pare on southern Sulawesi to Samarinda, East Kalimantan.

The harbour master in Pare-pare said based on the manifest, the ferry was carrying 250 passengers and 17 crew members.

But Koran Tempo, an Indonesian daily, quoted a local marine police officer in East Kalimantan as saying that relatives of those missing said that more than 140 names of passengers were not on the ferry's manifest.

Transport Ministry spokesman Bambang Ervan said the search for the victims would continue for seven days and evaluation would be made to determine whether the operation will be extended.

Frequent maritime accidents claim hundreds of lives every year in Indonesia, largely due to poor enforcement of safety regulations and overcrowding. Indonesia, an archipelago of more than 17,000 islands, depends heavily on ocean transport.

In December 2006, a ship with 638 people aboard sank off East Java province. Only 230 people survived. (dpa)