At the 16th meeting of the Port State Control Committee in Batumi, Georgia, April 2015, the Memorandum of Understanding on Port State Control in the Black Sea Region (BS MOU) decided to introduce a New Inspection Regime for selection of ships from 1st January 2016 to harmonize further its risk based targeting and inspection system with the leading memorandums, namely Paris MOU and Tokyo MOU, to the highest level.
The existing ship targeting system adjusted to accommodate additional generic parameters (e.g. Flag, RO, and Company performances), weighting points for each parameters, amendment of levels of the ship risk profile and determination of frequency of inspection of for each risk level, benefiting experience after four years of in depth comparative study of the leading PSC inspection regimes and considering discussion at IMO on the small flags.
The BS MOU New Inspection Regime, BS-IR (2016), consists of combination of Ship Risk Profile and Time Windows for clear indication of the order of priority in selection of ships for inspections. Black Sea Information System (BSIS) calculates and displays outputs of sections 1 to 3 using inspection records of member authorities stored in the BSIS for members use at the time of selection of ships for inspections.
The six member Authorities of the (Bulgaria, Georgia, Romania, Russian Federation, Turkey, Ukraine) of the Black Sea Memorandum of Understanding on Port State Control will start a concentrated inspection campaign on Crew Familiarization for Enclosed Space Entry. The three-month campaign will start on September 1, 2015 and end on November 30, 2015 under the co-ordination of the Maritime Transport Agency of Georgia. The campaign shall be conducted simultaneously with the Paris MOU, Tokyo MOU and other MOUs.
We are pleased to present the fourteenth issue of the Annual Report on Port State Control in the Black Sea region which is published under the auspices of the Port State Control Committee of the Black Sea MOU.
Port State Control is of particular importance to the BS MOU member Authorities due to the role of shipping in region’s trade, the sensitivity of the Black Sea basin and its coastline to environmental damage. Thereby BS MOU member Authorities have dedicated considerable resources to having a rigorous port State control program of the highest standard.
PSC inspections are conducted to ensure that foreign ships visiting the Black Sea ports are seaworthy, do not pose a pollution risk, provide a healthy and safe environment and comply with relevant international regulations and within the scope of the member Authorities’ national governing laws and regulations.
This PSC Annual report covers the period between 1st January and 31st December 2014. During this period the BS MOU member Authorities conducted a total of 5,092 initial inspections, representing 0.24 per cent increase as compared with 5,080 initial inspections in 2013. The regional inspection rate is 69.41% which is 5.80% increase compared with 2013. A total of 151 detentions were warranted to ships found with serious deficiencies. This represents a detention percentage of 2.97% which is 0.65% decrease as compared with 184 detentions in 2013. During 2014 a total of 18,350 deficiencies were recorded. The average number of deficiencies per inspection was 3.60; resulting in a 0.14 deficiency point improvement.
From 1st September 2014 to 30th November 2014, the BS MOU carried out a Concentrated Inspection Campaign (CIC) on STCW Hours of Rest throughout the region. This campaign involved all member States of the BS MOU and was conducted in conjunction with the Tokyo MOU and Paris MOU. The Paris MOU Guidelines and Questionnaire were utilized.
During the campaign, a total of 1,146 inspections were carried out with the CIC questionnaire involving 1,146 individual ships. Of this quantity 21 ships were detained with 6 (28.57%) detentions were being within the CIC scope. This means that in 6 cases the watch-keeping personnel hours of rest are not meeting STCW 78 (as amended ) requirements and had deficiencies, which were serious enough to detain the ship, resulting a CIC-topic related detention rate of 0.52 per cent.
A total of 168 deficiencies have been recorded as a direct result of this campaign. The overall number of CIC-topic related deficiencies per inspection was 0.15.
Concentrated Inspection Campaign (CIC) on STCW Hours of Rest 2014 carried out between 1 September 2014 and 30 November 2014 in the Black Sea MOU region shows the following preliminary results of the questions related to the verification both deck and engine room watch-keepers’ hours of rest.
6 ships have been detained in the Black Sea MOU region during the course of the CIC through deficiencies relating to STCW Hours of Rest. The most notable non-conformities observed were lack of correctly recorded records related hours of rest (7.33 %), followed by lack of watch schedule posted in an accessible area (1.75 %) and endorsement of the daily hours of rest records for each watch keeper (1.48 %).
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