Tag: sea search and rescue

SA govt to inject R5/R8-billion in country’s sea search and rescue capabilities: DoT

IMG_8510Pretoria: 17 December 2019

South Africa’s maritime risk management capabilities, precisely in oceans search and rescue as well as oil pollution, are to receive a major financial injection of up to R8-billion, the Department of Transport has announced.

Confirmation of the planned financial injection was made by Mr Mthunzi Madiya, Chief Director of Maritime at the Department of Transport, while addressing a maritime  sector stakeholders dinner hosted by the South African Maritime Safety Authority (SAMSA) in Durban on Thursday evening.

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Mr Mthunzi Madiya. Chief Director: Maritime. Department of Transport

Mr Madiya said the funding by Government was in response to identified weaknesses in the country’s risk management capabilities, many of which were raised during a maritime sector stakeholders workshop held also in Durban in early 2019.

According to Mr Madiya, the funding will be made available through a Maritime Development Fund.  He said a technical committee would be set-up next month (January 2020) to look at funding models.

“The Department of Transport has realised that as a country, we lack the sea rescue and oil pollution control capabilities in the waters. This affects aviation as well as the maritime sector. So, the DG (director general) is spearheading this process whereby we need to look at certain legislation that can be amended so we can be able to find the funding model  that will be sustainable that will enable us to build the capacity and capability of this country when it comes to search and rescue, as well as pollution control,” said Mr Madiya.

He added: “We have realised that we are under resourced. The situation is that we have only one pollution tug…based in the Western Cape (and) if something happens on the eastern side of the country such as the Eastern Cape, we don’t have the capability to respond in time,” he said.

For Mr Madiya’s full remarks on the matter, click on the video below

 

South Africa to host SADC Search and Rescue Conference next February

DSC_7533.JPGNews of the intended funding injection towards the country’s maritime risk management capabilities last Thursday evening came as confirmation was also made of a Southern African Development Community (SADC) member states’ five day conference in South Africa next February.

Its aim, the statement said, would be to evaluate and determining the entire region’s state of readiness for maritime and aviation risk mitigation and effective management.

According to the Department of Transport, 17 SADC member countries will gather for the conference in Durban from February 17 through February 21.

Organised jointly with the International Maritime Rescue Federation, (IMRF) and the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), according to the Department of Transport,  the main purpose of the conference will be “to sensitise decision-makers and SAR experts of the need to establish and maintain SAR systems within the Southern African region as well as to explore tangible and innovative ways to improve cooperation in the provision of these services within the region.

“The objectives of the conference are, among other things; to establish co-operative means and develop strategies to enhance SAR capacity and capability within the region.

“The conference will be held under the theme “Embracing Aeronautical and Maritime Search and Rescue (AMSAR) Services: first and foremost as a Government and secondly as an Industry Social Responsibility, ” it said.

DSC_7616.JPGThe department said the conference would further “consider and endorse the draft Terms of Reference (TORs) of the SADC SAR Working Group (WG) with a view to request the 23rd session of the SADC Civil Aviation Committee to approve the draft TORs and formally constitute the WG.”

Low-sulphur ship fuel local legislation to miss 01 January target date

Meanwhile, the maritime sector stakeholders’s gathering in Durban last Thursday also heard that South Africa, contrary to an earlier pronouncement by the Minister of Transport, Mr Fikile Mbalula, will not have in place an enabling legislation for the regulation of the International Maritime Organisation (IMO)’s new low sulphur regime effective on 01 January 2020.

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Mr Sobantu Tilayi. Acting CEO: SAMSA

The confirmation was made by Mr Sobantu Tilayi, acting Chief Executive Officer of SAMSA. However, he said, the country would still be able to ensure that vessels traversing the region’s three ocean’s waters would be monitored appropriately as required in terms of the IMO’s Marpol  Convention Annexture VI, and in terms of which lower sulphur content for ships fuel becomes mandatory.

Precisely, in terms of the IMO,  the new sulphur limit in ships fuel is 0.50% from 01 January 2020.  Revised regulations for the prevention of air pollution from ships under the MARPOL (Annex VI) were adopted in October 2008 and ratified by more than 65 countries including South Africa.

In terms of this, all sizes of ships sailing on the world’s oceans will need to use fuel oil that meets the 0.50% limit from 1 January 2020. The 0.50% sulphur limit extends to carriage of bunker fuel with sulphur content of more than 0.50% for vessels not fitted with Exhaust Gas Cleaning Systems (EGSC). The carriage ban will come into effect on 1 March 2020.

DSC_7646.JPGIn Durban on Thursday evening, Mr Tilayi also announced that South Africa would allow scrubbing (vessels fitted with EGSC) until such time that ongoing studies of its efficacy had become conclusive.

For Mr Tilayi’s full remarks on this and various other maritime sector development issues, among them; reasons for the lacklustre development of the country’s ship registry, improved South Africa relations both in Africa and internationally, as well immediate to medium term future prospects of the country’s maritime sector,  click on the video below.

At the SAMSA stakeholders’ function in Durban on Thursday evening, this blog also chatted randomly with leaders in the sector and specifically women in maritime for both their company’s highlights of 2019 as well as progress being achieved in the general advancement of women in the sector.

Video interviews of their views will be shared on this platform soon.

 

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Angola finally in the fold for Africa agreement on sea search and rescue cooperation: SAMSA

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Angola’s Ambassador to the United Kingdom, Mr. Rui J. Carneiro Mangueira, formally signing a Multilateral Search and Rescue Agreement with South Africa in London during a meeting with South Africa’s Transport Minister, Mr Fikile Mbalula in July 2019

Pretoria: 03 August 2019

Angola’s formal ratification of a Multilateral Search and Rescue Agreement (MSRA) with South Africa recently has finally brought into fruition a 12 years old effort to establish formal cooperation on sea search and rescue operations in Southern Africa among six countries considered vital to the success of the operations in the sub region.

Angola, represented by its ambassador to the United Kingdom, Mr. Rui J. Carneiro Mangueira, formally signed the agreement in London during a meeting with South Africa’s Transport Minister, Mr Fikile Mbalula while attending to an International Maritime Organization (IMO) Council gathering on 22 July.

Also attending was the Acting Chief Executive officer of the South African Maritime Safety Authority (SAMSA), Mr Sobantu Tilayi.

The objectives of the Agreement are to ensure co-operation between signatories (South Africa, Comoros, Madagascar, Mozambique, Namibia and Angola) by pulling together resource and infrastructure in improving maritime search and rescue in the region.

South Africa signed the Agreement in 2007 in Cape Town, and Angola was the last outstanding of the five other required signatories since then.

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Angola’s Ambassador to the United Kingdom, Mr. Rui J. Carneiro Mangueira, shaking hands with South Africa’s Minister of Transport, Mr Fikile Mbalula after Angola’s formal ratification of a Multilateral Search and Rescue cooperation agreement in London recently.

The sub regional agreement arrangement among these countries stemmed from a 2000 IMO Florence Conference on Search and Rescue and Global Maritime Distress and Safety System that sought to establish regional maritime SAR arrangements in Africa and invited all African coastal States to agree to the establishment of sub-regional RCCs.

The Africa region would be arranged into five sub regional areas with Maritime Rescue Coordinating Centres (MRCCs).

At that conference, South Africa was identified as one of the five countries to host a regional Maritime Rescue Coordinating Centre (MRCC) and in 2007, the IMO formally assigned South Africa’s MRCC in Cape Town under the control of the South African Maritime Safety Authority (SAMSA) as the sub region’s centre with six sub centres cooperating on the basis of multilateral agreements located in the Comoros, Madagascar, Mozambique, Namibia and now Angola. 

The Africa region’s other MRCCs with a total 26 sub-centres, are located in Mombasa (Kenya: 2006), Lagos (Nigeria: 2008), Monrovia (Liberia: 2009) and Buoznika (Morocco: 2011), covering  all African countries bordering the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, from Morocco to Somalia, anti-clockwise, as well as the nearby Atlantic and Indian Ocean Island States.

According to the IMO, the centres are intended to work co-operatively to provide search and rescue coverage in what had previously been identified as one of the world’s oceans region suffering most from a lack of adequate SAR and GMDSS infrastructure.

The centres’ sharing of information would also play an important role in the fight against piracy, kidnapping and ransom demands on the high seas – something, which IMO and the whole maritime community, had pledged to tackle with renewed vigour over the past decade.

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