Jamaica ready to comply with port security code

Thursday, July 1, 2004

KINGSTON, Jamaica: Thursday, July 1, 2004 is the deadline given to all countries to ensure that their ports are fully compliant with the International Maritime Organization’s (IMO) International Ship and Port Facility Security (ISPS) Code, and the Maritime Authority of Jamaica (MAJ) is ensuring that not only are the country’s ports ready, but also maritime and shipping personnel.

The MAJ, as part of its mandate as the agency responsible for matters relating to ships, hosted 26 persons from local and regional shipping and security organizations at a recent workshop, which formed part of the region’s preparation for the implementation of the ISPS Code. Critical to the process is the availability of qualified personnel.

The two-day workshop, which was held on June17 and 18, was based on IMO model courses, to ensure that persons performing the functions of Ship Security Officers and Company Security Officers possess the knowledge base and skills for assessing and implementing their security systems in accordance with the ISPS Code. Participants included ship owners, pilots, port facility officers and security personnel from Trinidad and Tobago, Antigua and Jamaica.

Introduced to enhance maritime safety and security both from ship and the ship-port interface, the ISPS Code provides, among other things, proactive guidelines to assess security risks and to implement measures to reduce these risks. The IMO, while acknowledging that the ISPS Code may not be the final solution, is of the view that “it is better to be prepared than to be exposed to the global threat of terrorism”.

There are far-reaching implications for maritime trade for those countries that do not comply with the Code. In fact, the implementation of the ISPS Code has a direct bearing on the livelihood of many businesses, especially in determining revenue and profits.

“If Kingston, in particular, was not certified, it would mean that we would lose all of the transshipment passing through the port of Kingston, because our principals would automatically move the business to a port that is fully compliant, like Panama, which is one of our rivals, and which is already compliant,” explained David Yee Sing, Managing Director of International Shipping Limited.

He said that while the Jamaican Government and all the agencies involved “worked assiduously to achieve this compliance way ahead of many other ports in the Caribbean,” the region on a whole has a responsibility to ensure that all countries meet the deadline for compliance, as all the Caribbean nations rely on each other in some measure.

“We are concerned about a lot of the ports in the Caribbean, because Jamaica being a ‘hub’ must have ‘spokes’. Being the transshipment hub, we are sending cargo to all the ports around the Caribbean basin and for the ports that are not compliant, the cargo coming from there is classified as being ‘contaminated’,” Mr. Yee Sing told JIS News.

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