Deficiencies on ship

For so many years now, the shipping industry in our country has remained strong and vibrant in providing quality and efficient services to all its customers, shippers, consignees, passengers, etc. Truth to tell, most of the domestic shipping companies are based in Cebu with a considerable number of passenger and cargo ships plying the routes between Cebu port and major ports of the Visayas and Mindanao.

But in order to keep the shipping business sustainable and worthy of trust by the public, the safety aspect of the ship, crew, and passengers must be given top priority. In our times, many shipowners (except those who are compliant), are over-confident that they can get off the hook of the law and be out of any violation with regard to the operation of their fleet.

I used to work on one of the domestic vessels based in Cebu which had been in operation for more than five years already; however, the ship was clearly non-compliant with regard to the minimum number of crew as required by regulations, and yet it continued to operate with its daily regular voyages between two ports at the expense of the riding public.

Under pressure from the Philippine Coast Guard, the company then hired the needed crew to fill in the vacancy, and thus, a complete complement of crew with documents had been reached. However, those undocumented crew with no seaman's book and no Certificate of Competency issued by Marina were listed as passengers in the passenger manifest; but actually, they were crew of the same vessel which the company decided to retain onboard as they were all experienced crew and knowledgeable of the vessel's daily operation.

Likewise, the same company deliberately ignored the required good working conditions for all the ship's safety and firefighting equipment as well as all the ship's lifesaving appliances. Besides, the ship had an outstanding structural integrity defect that was deliberately left unrectified for no reason at all. With this in mind, the ship's crew and the riding public unwittingly took a ride on a ship whose owner ignored the safety aspect of the same.

This is the sad reality of our country's maritime sector --ships being allowed to operate with multiple violations and deficiencies not rectified.

An abuse of this kind must by all means be put to a halt by the concerned government maritime agency to preempt any ramifications with existing maritime regulations.

The call of the hour is for the strict implementation and enforcement of our existing maritime regulations to ensure the safe and seamless operation of ships, be they ocean-going or domestic ones. In this regard, the Marina and the Philippine Coast Guard are duty-bound to suspend the operation of any vessel or any shipping company that is found to have a lot of deficiencies on its vessels and be allowed to operate only after all the deficiencies have been rectified.

Joselito S. Berdin

Lapu-Lapu City