South Africa’s budding maritime business chamber formation a vital intervention; industry sector players

Pretoria: 21 July 2022

Current ongoing efforts towards broadening involvement and engagement of business of all sizes in South Africa’s maritime economic sector through a representative national business chamber have received a nod from a number of keyrole players in the sector, among them diverse national institutions as well as industry sector principals.

This emerged this past week during a three (3) days strategy planning session of the budding Maritime Business Chamber (MBC) previously the Eastern Maritime Business Chamber – held at the St Francis Bay Conference Centre in the Eastern Cape province and attended or actively addressed in person or virtually by representatives of several national institutions and businesses across the private and public sectors, including financial institutions.

From the public sector, these included the South African Maritime Safety Authority (SAMSA), the South African International Maritime Institute (SAIMI), Transnet National Ports Authority (TNPA), the KwaZulu-Natal Sharks Board Maritime Centre of Excellence, and the Nelson Mandela Metropolitican Municipality (NMBM).

Financial institutions included the Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA) and Absa Bank while private sector institutions included FishSA as well as individual company representatives, among them CEO of Algoa Bay based bunkering services firm, Heron Marine SA, Ms Kgomotso Selokane; and Commander Tsietsi Mokhele, group executive of Johannesburg based maritime sector consulting firm, Elekhom Global.

The event hosts, the MBC are an upsized version of a small business chamber that started off in Gqeberha (a.k.a Port Elizabeth) in Algoa Bay in 2019 as a small, micro and medium entreprises (SMME) organisation with express interest in involvement and engagement for business and other economic opportunities identification and exploration in the region’s maritime economic sector.

Maritime Business Chamber chairperson, Mr Unathi Sonti

According to MBC chairperson, Mr Unathi Sonti last Tuesday in St Francis Bay, through ongoing intense and expansive interaction with various stakeholders in South Africa’s maritime sector mostly across the four coastal provinces (KwaZulu-Natal, Eastern Cape, Western Cape and Northern Cape), a “clear gap” was identified for an institution of the nature operating at national level, in order to advance the interests of those people and businesses with direct interest but without any formal representation in the sector.

According to Mr Sonti, such business chamber with precise focus on the maritime sector was also vital in terms of the national interest of the country.

The feedback over the past two years culminated in last week’s three days’ strategy session workshop as a formal step towards formal expansion of the maritime business chamber countrywide, he explained. For his full views on the subject, click on the video below.

Mr Unathi Sonti, chairperson of Maritime Business Chamber chatting about the development of a national business chamber for the maritime sector in South Africa

Meanwhile, all the companies and institutions represented at the event at St Francis Bay on Monday to Wednesday last week, expressed a common agreement in terms of their full support of both the idea of a business maritime chamber, as well as the expanse of its reach, domestically and abroad.

In the next three videos below, this blog chatted to at least two of the representatives of five key public sector maritime focused institutions present; SAMSA’s Head for Corporate Affairs and Acting Chief Operations Officer, Mr Vusi September; and SAIMI’s Mr Malwande Nkalitshana.

Mr Vusi September, SAMSA Head for Corporate Affairs and acting Chief Operations Officer; sharing the agency viewpoint on its support for the formation of a national maritime business chamber.
Mr Malwande Nkalitshana of the South African Internaitonal Maritime Institute (SAIMI) also weighing on why a national maritime business chamber matters.

From a private sector business perspective, Ms Selokane, CEO of Heron Marine SA also shared her views.

Ms Kgomotso Selokane. CEO of bunkering services firm Heron Marine SA and patron of the Maritime Business Chamber also sharing her own perspective of the importance of such a structure within context of South Africa’s broad economy and people’s interests

End

New Safe Manning Document fee held in abeyance due to outbreak of Covid-19, back in force: SAMSA

SAMSA File Photo

Pretoria: 07 June 2022

A new Safe Manning Document fee approved two years ago but withheld from implementation due to the global outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 is now back in force effective from August 2022, the South African Maritime Safety Authority (SAMSA) has announced.

The announcement in the form a Marine Information Notice (07-22) was made by SAMSA in Pretoria on Thursday.

The Merchant Shipping (Training, Certification and Safe Manning) Regulations 2021 describes a Safe Manning Document as “….. a document that describes the minimum manning considered necessary to ensure that a ship is sufficiently and efficiently manned, and that is issued –
(a) in the case of a South African ship, by the Authority; and
(b) in the case of any other ship, by or under the Authority of that flag State;

The SAMSA announcement on the coming into effect of the new fees states: “Historically, a charge was payable for the issue of a Safe Manning Document. However, there was no charge for the Safe Manning Document if it was issued together with a Local General SafetyCertificate for the same vessel.

“The Determination of Charges which came into effect on 24ᵗʰ August 2020, made provision for fees to be payable for the issue of a Safe Manning Document. Due to the COVID Pandemic at that time; it was decided to waive this charge considering the financial implications.

“On the 23ʳᵈ of June 2022, South Africa ended all COVID-19 restrictions. As a result, SAMSA has decided to implement the charge to issue a Safe Manning Document effective from 1ˢᵗ August 2022, as required under Regulation 8(2) of the Determination of charges. Therefore, a charge of R 1117 will be payable for the issue of a Safe Manning Document; unless a Safe Manning Document is required under Regulation 8(8), which will attract a higher fee.

“If a new Determination of Charges is gazetted in the future, the charge for the issue of the Safe Manning Document will be determined as per that gazette,” says SAMSA.

The notice will be accessible from the SAMSA website from Thursday.

End