Piracy high on agenda at IMO Maritime Safety meeting

Piracy and armed robbery against ships off the coast of Somalia and in the Gulf of Aden and the wider Indian Ocean will be high on the agenda when IMO’s Maritime Safety Committee (MSC) meets at the organisation’s London headquarters for its 89th session from May 11 to 20, 2011.
The busy agenda also includes adoption of amendments, concerning lifeboat release hooks, to the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS) and work related to the implementation of the Torremolinos Protocol on fishing vessel safety, as well as goal-based standards for vessel construction and the long-range identification and tracking of ships. The MSC will also consider the approval of a number of draft resolutions for submission to the IMO Assembly, to be held in late 2011.

Piracy and armed robbery against ships to be discussed

The MSC is expected to discuss the development of guidance on the employment of private, armed security service providers on board ships; measures to improve compliance with the Best Management Practices to Deter Piracy off the Coast of Somalia and in the Arabian Sea area; and proposed guidelines to assist in the collection of evidence after a hijack.

The number of acts of piracy and armed robbery against ships reported to the organisation and which occurred in 2010 was 489, against 406 during the previous year, representing an increase of 20.4 percent from the figure for 2009. The areas most affected in 2010 were East Africa and the Indian Ocean followed by the Far East.

During the year, it was reported that two crewmembers were killed and 30 crewmembers were reportedly injured/assaulted, while 1,027 crewmembers were reportedly taken hostage or kidnapped. Fifty-seven vessels were reportedly hijacked, with one vessel reportedly still unaccounted for.

Adoption of SOLAS amendments – lifeboat release mechanisms

The MSC will be invited to consider, for adoption, a proposed new paragraph 5 of SOLAS regulation III/1 which would require lifeboat on-load release mechanisms not complying with new International Life-Saving Appliances (LSA) Code requirements, to be replaced no later than the first scheduled dry-docking of the ship after July 1, 2014 but, in any case, not later than July 1, 2019.

The SOLAS amendment is intended to establish new, stricter, safety standards for lifeboat release and retrieval systems, aimed at preventing accidents during lifeboat launching, and will require the assessment and possible replacement of a large number of lifeboats release hooks.

The committee will also be invited to adopt draft guidelines for evaluation of and replacement of lifeboat release and retrieval systems and related amendments to the LSA Code which, along with the proposed draft SOLAS amendment, had been referred back to an inter-sessional working group which reported to the 55th session of the Sub-Committee on Ship Design and Equipment (DE) held in March. The MSC will also consider associated amendments to the revised recommendation on testing of life-saving appliances (resolution MSC 81(70)). (Source: Bairdmaritime)

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