BackIndia acts against ship manager Anglo-Eastern over safety lapses
Directorate General of Shipping suspends licence granted to firm’s Singapore unit to manage ships registered in India
Premium(As the shipping downturn unfolded in the wake of the global recession that began in 2008, many shipowners started cutting corners including by deferring the statutory safety surveys.)
India’s maritime administration, the Directorate General of Shipping (DGS), has struck against global ship management firm Anglo-Eastern Group Ltd by suspending the licence (a so-called document of compliance) granted to the firm’s Singapore unit to manage ships registered in India.
The 6 September suspension of the licence given to Anglo-Eastern Ship Management (Singapore) Pte Ltd was ordered after the company failed “to ensure timely completion of the statutory surveys and for undertaking loading operations of the vessel (an oil tanker named MT Prem Pride) with expired statutory certificates rendering her unsafe and unseaworthy". Prem Pride is owned by Mumbai-based Mercator Ltd, but the ship was given to Anglo-Eastern for technical management, which is common in the shipping industry worldwide.
The repeated failures of the company to ensure that the ship under its management is maintained in conformity with the provisions of the mandatory rules and regulations indicate the failure of its safety management system (SMS), DGS said.
The lapses by the firm led DGS to conclude that Anglo-Eastern Ship Management (Singapore) “does not have the requisite management control to ensure safe operation of vessels under its management as envisaged under the International Safety Management (ISM) Code".
The suspension of the licence means Anglo-Eastern is barred from managing ships registered in India or so-called Indian flag ships. To be sure, this does not prevent the firm from managing ships registered overseas. Nonetheless, it is a loss of reputation for Anglo-Eastern, which prides itself for its service standards and emphasis on safety.
The Hong Kong-based firm is one of the top five third-party ship managers worldwide, managing more than 450 ships and employing more than 20,000 crew.
In a separate, yet related, development, DGS on 10 September suspended the competency certificates issued to three Indian marine engineering officers for three years for lapses that had led to the 29 December 2011 explosion on board oil tanker MT Prem Divya (also owned by Mercator but managed by the Indian unit of Anglo-Eastern) at Fujairah in the United Arab Emirates that killed five people—two crew and three repair workers.
Those whose competency certificates were suspended for their role in the mishap include S.M. Rai, a vice-president and head (technical) at Mercator, Deepak Aroraand Umesh Kumar, fleet director and technical superintendent, respectively, at Anglo-Eastern Ship Management (India) Pvt. Ltd.
The officers were tasked with the responsibility and the authority for the safe operation of the ship. All the three officers are no longer working with the companies they were associated with at the time of the explosion, which shook the conscience of the global shipping community. During the period of suspension of competency certificates, the officers cannot associate themselves with ship operations.
A preliminary inquiry conducted by the DGS established that the explosion on Prem Divya, “though caused by an unsafe act of hot work on board, was the natural and logical outcome of the series of safety violations which were happening on board the vessel for the past several months prior to the incident".
The inquiry further established that the three officers were “aware of these repeated safety violations, but did nothing tangible to address the root causes behind them". It concluded that there were “several serious problems associated with the maintenance of the vessel, many of them needing substantial lay-up of the ship".
The three officers “were not only aware of these problems, but presumably failed to comprehend the gravity of the situation through inadvertence or otherwise, while the vessel continued its commercial operations with serious deficiencies onboard rendering her unsafe and unseaworthy, " DGS said.
After the mishap, the DGS suspended the licence given to Anglo-Eastern Ship Management (India) to manage Indian ships. To continue managing Indian registered ships, Anglo-Eastern Singapore took a licence (document of compliance) from the DGS in July 2012.
While the DGS has taken disciplinary action against the ship’s managers and the three officers, India’s maritime administration says it has “limitations" in acting against the ship’s owner, Mercator, for the lapses.
Because, once the ship’s owner and its manager sign an agreement on managing the vessel, all duties and responsibilities imposed by the ISM Code on the vessel is passed on to the ship management firm.
Still, to reach the stage of suspending the licence of the ship manager and the competency certificates of the officers—a drastic and bold step though delayed—is considered a feat because of the pressures that the maritime administration has to contend with in such cases.
The mishap has links with the recession that roiled many economies.
As the shipping downturn unfolded in the wake of the global recession that began in 2008, many shipowners started cutting corners including by deferring the statutory safety surveys, particularly expensive dry-dock repairs, which, according to rule, has to be done twice in a span of five years on a ship, with intervals between them not exceeding 36 months. The DGS was flooded with requests from Indian fleet owners for deferment of the mandatory safety surveys on ships for reasons such as non-availability of dry-docking facility, public interest and uncertainty over the ship’s voyage schedule.
India’s maritime administration soon realized that fleet owners were seeking postponement of safety surveys mainly due to commercial reasons and poor advance planning.
When the requests for extension of surveys started coming in as a matter of routine without proper justification, the DGS told fleet owners through a notice in September 2009 that commercial priorities will not be allowed to override safety of the ship. Yet, to deal with unavoidable situations, the DGS allowed shipowners to defer the mandatory safety surveys by three months, subject to certain conditions.
Prem Divya was detained at Hazira in Gujarat by the DGS on some 35 counts of deficiencies, a month prior to the explosion. It was released after the shipowner/manager gave an undertaking to rectify the defects within 30 days. Even after giving this undertaking, the oil tanker carried on commercial operations for more than 20 days.
The incident at Fujairah clearly demonstrates the dangers involved when shipowners/managers don’t stick to the timeline for mandatory safety surveys and continue to run a ship when she was not fit to operate. The sooner India’s maritime administration wields the stick to prevent the recurrence of such mishaps, the better it is for the shipping community. A spokesperson for Anglo Eastern Ship Management (Singapore) said that the firm hadn’t decided yet what to do. “We are going to have an internal meeting, seeking advice on how to go about it," a spokesperson for the company said adding that the firm had responded to the DGS in writing when it was asked to show cause why the license should not be suspended.
The DGS, however, said that the firm in its response could not provide any valid reason for its lapses.
Mercator declined to comment.
P. Manoj looks at trends in the shipping industry.
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