Maritime administration still needs regulations for river monitoring
- English
Stabroek News
June 30, 2002
Though established in 1999, the Maritime Administration Department (MAD) is still not fully operational because adequate regulations are yet to be promulgated for it to effectively carry out its mandate.
Interim Director of MAD, Ivor English, told Stabroek News in an interview recently that some regulations have come on stream since the department’s establishment but more are to be established. "The department is not fully functional. We have not yet begun to seriously address every issue. We need to have the teeth to do that. The regulations are needed so we would be better equipped," English said.
He said that already regulations have been formulated to address a number of areas. These include licencing of vessels, tonnage, and registration.
Regulations were still needed for more effective monitoring and enforcement of river navigation. English said that for this to be carried out efficiently, there would need to be collaboration by his department with the marine police and Guyana Defence Force’s Coast Guard.
"We are responsible for the enforcement and monitoring but we need the power and cooperation of these agencies for surveillance and to ensure compliance with the regulations," he stated.
Among the duties involved in this area are checking that the right size and type of vessel is operating in a particular area, manning requirements such as certification of crew members, issuance of harbour licences, ensuring the requisite safety gear is on board the vessel, checking that speedboats have the requisite free board, and ensuring proper navigation is maintained and usage of the right river channels.
On the issue of river safety, English said that ideally all persons using the waterways should be equipped with safety gear such as lifejackets. However, he said that the regulations would make it mandatory for all passenger services to have safety equipment.
"The regulations would apply to everyone but stricter attention would be paid to the passenger services to ensure their adherence," he said.
English said the new regulations would also cover the passenger rates for the services to put more order into the fare structure. He said owners and operators of speedboats should organise themselves into associations so they could be better regulated.
MAD is a separate entity from the Transport and Harbours Department, which is now only responsible for the management and operation of the ferries. MAD was established on July 1, 1999, and comprises two divisions: the Ports and Harbours Division and the Maritime Safety Division.
The Ports and Harbours Division has assumed responsibility for piloting, receiving wrecks, carrying out hydrographic surveys, dredging, issuing of harbour licences, collecting of light dues and harbour tonnage, and ensuring that the regulations pertaining to river navigation are enforced.
The Maritime Safety Division is responsible for registration and licencing of vessels, carrying out port and flag state inspections, registration of seamen, issuing of seamen’s discharge books, control and regulation of government wharves and stellings, ensuring quality control in terms of training and certification of seamen and accident investigations, and inserting buoys and beacons, among other areas.
English said the department conducted checks on the passenger services and these would be intensified when MAD became more functional. He said the checks are not only to ascertain certification, but also to determine whether the vessel was seaworthy and that it concurred with number of passengers it was registered to carry.
Touching a little on the ferry operations, English said the Demerara service remained unprofitable be-cause of the establishment of the Demerara Harbour Bridge. But he said there was no immediate intention to phase it out and it would be retained as a social service. He recalled the recent mishap when the Demerara Harbour Bridge was hit by a tug and was out of service for a few days.
He noted that the Demerara ferry was there to transport vehicles and passengers, so the impact was not severely felt.
The Adventure ferry in Essequibo and the Berbice ferry were profitable, he said, but noted the impact would be felt by the latter if and when the Berbice bridge was constructed.
Bas Norman, of Europe West Indies Shipping Line, had recently highlighted the need for better communication accessibility to the lighthouse by ships entering Port Georgetown. He had stated that ship captains had reported that they sometimes did not receive any answer from the personnel in the lighthouse as they approached the harbour. But English dismissed this as probably an isolated incident.
He said the lighthouse was manned on a 24-hour basis on a shift system and his department had received no reports about any lack of access by ships to the lighthouse. English said if there were any such cases, the ship’s representative should report them to MAD so that remedial action could be taken.
Wrecks in the harbour sometimes pose problems for vessels plying the route. English acknowledged there were wrecks, but pointed out it would take considerable capital input and expertise, probably solicited from overseas, to clear the channel.
"In reality the department is the receiver of wrecks but we are not necessarily responsible for the removal of wrecks," English said. He stated the owners of the wrecks were responsible for their removal, but it was difficult to ascertain the owners because they tended to abandon the sunken vessels.
When this happens, wrecks are sold to recover costs when they are salvaged. He said that there were also persons who took the responsibility to recover wrecks and they secured whatever benefits derived from them.
English said the channel was maintained by dredging on a 24-hour basis. The channel is kept to a 6.5-metre to 6.9-metre draught plus the rise of the tide.
There have not been many cases of ships running aground in the channel and when this happened it was not for long periods, English said.
He noted that the port was an estuarial one, which carries the characteristic of siltation in the channel. But because of the nature of the soil on the river bed, ships could manoeuvre out when they ran into difficulties.