Ship owners warned against using ships too old

Vietnamese ships appear on Tokyo MOU’s black list which includes the ships of 10 countries in the world, because the ships are believed to be unable to satisfy the requirements for operation.

According to the Vietnam Maritime Bureau, in the first eight months of 2011, PSC (Port State Control) at the seaports in Asia Pacific (Tokyo MOU), held into custody 62 ships with Vietnamese nationality, because the ships were found as not satisfying the standards on exhaust fumes, maritime safety and having high polluting level.

Meanwhile, PSC at the seaports in Western Europe and North Atlantic (Paris MOU) also took into custody a Vietnamese ship.

Vietnamese ships continuously taken into custody

In early 2011, Thanh Ba Ship was arrested by PSC at Indonesian Tanjung Priok port, because the ship was found as not meeting the requirements for maritime safety. After paying fines and fixing the problems, Thanh Ba was let free. However, in May 2011, Thanh Ba was once again taken into custody at Kusan port in South Korea, for the same reason.

Recently, Quang Dinh 36-ALCl, which was handling goods at Haikou port in China, was examined by the PSC at the port. The examination found out that firefighting, hydraulic pump and waste discharge systems did not work. The examiner released the decision to take the ship into custody and prevented from leaving the port.

The ship was only let free in mid August 2011. At present, the Vietnam Register is joining forces with the Vietnam Maritime Bureau to verify the ship and ask the ship owner to fix the problems.

According to Do Xuan Quynh, Secretary General of the Vietnam Ship Owners’ Association, Vietnamese ships have not escaped from the Tokyo MOU’s black list. It is because Vietnamese ships remain poorly equipped, while Vietnamese ship owners lack knowledge about the international maritime laws.

Also according to Quynh, though the European convention on limiting vessels’ emissions has not taken effect yet, the ships that arrive in the region and cause pollution there, will be arrested immediately.

Ships old, crew’s qualification bad

According to the Vietnam Register, most of the ships seized at foreign ports are old ships with poor equipments owned by the shipping transport firms which were established many years ago, in 1960s. The Vietnam Register once released a document, guiding the ship owners to heighten the quality of the ship management works and fix the problems. The agency also asked the ships running on international routes to regularly have technical issues checked to ensure maritime security before docking at foreign ports.

In case any Vietnamese ships are taken into custody, ship owners have to report about the cases to the Vietnam Register.

Quynh said that there are the fleets old more than 20 years which still got the permission from the Vietnam Register to run on international routes. The Vietnam Ship Owners Association has sent a petition to the Vietnam Register, asking the agency to revoke the licenses to provide services on international routes from the ships aged more than 30 years.

According to Le Tuan, Deputy Chair of the Vietnam Navigators’ Association, due to the limited qualification of the crew, in many cases, Vietnamese did not follow the required procedures.

For example, when discharging machine oil to the environment, Vietnamese ships sometimes “skips necessary moves”, discharging oil directly to the sea, while not letting the oil go through the treatment system, because they want to save fuel. That explains why Vietnamese fleets find it difficult to dock at the European ports when they cannot meet the strict requirements.

La Ngoc Khue, former Deputy Minister of Transport has urged the ministry to ask the government to apply urgent measures to give financial support to the shipbuilding industry and sea transport. The support will help speed up the projects on building ships which have been running perfunctorily due to the lack of capital.

Tags: Vietnam shipping industry