WARDING quality is hardly a radical new concept but sadly governments and regulators still too often reach for the stick rather than the carrot when it comes to dealing with the shipping industry.
It is a cause for celebration then that the members of the Paris Memorandum of Understanding on Port State Control have seen fit to adopt their New Inspection Regime.
While the NIR may look worryingly like the product of a Brussels-based management consultancy thanks to its acronym soup of references to THETIS and SIReNaC, the new system should be welcomed as a positive step forward for owners and operators.
Developed in parallel with the European Union’s third maritime safety package, it makes use of a company’s performance and any available International Maritime Organisation flag state audit data for identifying the risk profile of ships. The past inspection record of the ship as well as the ship’s age and ship type, flag and recognised organisation status will influence the targeting.
In short, good owners will be rewarded with a lighter inspection burden while those deemed to be high-risk will feel the full force of the port state inspectors’ eagle eyes on a more frequent basis.
The devil is in the detail of such systems and it may take some time for good owners to reap the rewards promised to them, but the ethos behind the move is a sound one that deserves cooperation.
The next step forward will be to convince the insurance sector to adopt a similar attitude to rewarding owners who are going out of their way to protect their clean efficient vessels from attack.
