Inland waterways get the boost they long needed in India

This press release says it all. Kind of proud to have been a small part here. The big part is that the champions from DG Shipping and MMD will be kept as far away as possible from this once the rules have been set. Wonderful, overall, next step - coastal shipping . . . and the big boost to East and North East India, long awaited.

http://pib.nic.in/newsite/erelease.aspx?relid=79933

PM fast tracks move on private sector investment in Inland Waterway Transport

The Prime Minister has initiated a move to fast track the development and use of Inland Waterways Transport involving the private sector and Public Sector Undertakings. The initiative will harness huge potential of inland waterways in transporting bulk cargo like coal, food grains, fertilizers, project cargo, fly ash, Over Dimensional Cargo and containers at competitive cost for the public and private sector companies. Adequate use of waterways will also ease the burden on rail and road infrastructure. At a meeting of the inter-ministerial coordination committee Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister informed that a tripartite agreement signed between the National Thermal Power Corporation, Inland Waterways Authority of India and a private developer has led to competitive transportation rates for the NTPC while private sector investment of about Rs 650 crore has been committed. This agreement relates to the Farakka Power Project. The following decisions were also agreed upon in the meeting: NTPC will provide long term cargo commitment for 3 million metric tons of coal for Barh power project once all its five units are operational by 2016-17. The execution of Coal handling facility at Jogighopa and rail connectivity will be taken up under the Non Lapsable Central Pool of Resources (NLCPR) scheme. Food Corporation of India will expeditiously provide long term cargo commitment for 3 years for transportation of foodgrains to Tripura and Assam from Kolkata and within Assam. MEA will try to extend the period of Trade and Transit Protocol beyond March 2012 when it comes for renewal to provide longer certainty to vessel operators. Further, efforts shall be made for early completion of Ashuganj multi-modal port by Bangladesh and its regular use as a transit port. Ministry of Shipping will consider providing additional money, if need be, to ensure night navigation facilities on Indo-Bangladesh Protocol route. ONGC and Oil India will convey a firm commitment of cargo through IWT in two weeks to IWAI. CONCOR will provide firm commitment for transportation of part of their container cargo from Pandu through IWT. The progress on these decisions will be reviewed in two months time by the Principal Secretary to PM.

How secure is communication at DG Shipping?

We are all aware of how secure paper and paper communications are at DG Shipping's office, and its subordinate offices, in India. Nothing more needs to be said about an organisation where touts flourish openly outside their offices, and all documents are available, easily. At a price, ofcourse - though if you want them genuinely, it is another question.

But now look at the electronic communication part of things?

As a seafarer who was also the head of an infotech company, I got some youngsters to run an audit on the DG Shipping website, as well as the MMD website. What they told me was so shocking, that I do not wish to share it here - or anywhere else, except by printed hard copy to the relevant people.

But just as an example:-

# Private email addresses are happily used for official eMails, in direct contravention of all Government of India policies on the subject, by officials at DG Shipping. For example:-

"dgcommcentre@satyammail.net"

How secure is this otherwise open email address, then?

# While the website claims that the site is designed, hosted and maintained by the DGS Computer Cell, the truth and reality are otherwise - and very easily traced back to a certain private company with interests also in the maritime education field, amongst other things.What is this all about, then?

# The sanctity of question papers for the written exams is in doubt - this has often been rumoured about, and basis the above, needs an exhaustive audit. If the exam question papers are rattling around in the same servers, then??

# What is with the over reliance on Internet Explorer and MS, why is DGS not using technology which can be read open source too?

# The website is not optimised for usage on mobile phones or Mac/Apple.

# Most of all, the website layout is thoroughly confusing and the search functions do to not work well.

On the ground level, for seafarers, the "instructions" on the website as well as the forms on the website are not in concurrence with actual practice onsite in the offices. If seafarers have some queries, they are told to refer to the website - but then the actual practice is way different. Score one for the tout-babu nexus again.

Is it too much to expect a half-way decent website from DG Shipping, please?

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incidentally, this is the security of our information on the DG Website, asprovided for on their own terms and conditions, here:-

http://dgship.gov.in/privacy.html

Our Disclosure of Your Information

We will not disclose your information to anyone outside of DGS or other Allied Offices, except as described in this section.

We may disclose aggregated anonymous statistics about many Users to advertisers, content and service providers and other affiliated and unaffiliated companies.

We sometimes engage third parties to perform services for us, including in connection with this Site, that require us to disclose Users' Personally Identifiable Information to them. If we make any such disclosure, we will require such parties to keep the information confidential and to use it only to perform the services.

We may from time to time wish to disclose your information to third parties that wish to market, or provide information about, their products and services to you. We will only do so after obtaining your permission. The only other times we may disclose your Personally Identifiable Information collected on this Site are as follows:

• In the event of an asset sale, merger, consolidation, restructuring, reorganization, liquidation or other similar transaction involving DGS or this Site, we may transfer some or all User information, including Personally Identifiable Information, to the successor company.
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Fatigue at Sea - a Master's point of view

In response to the earlier article on the subject, which can be found here:-
http://matescabin.blogspot.com/2010/11/fatigue-at-sea-lllloooong-post.html


The Master in this case is in his 50s, owns and operates family as well as own businesses ashore INCLUDING a software company, is extremely competent and known as the best SAILING Master in the company he works in on gas carriers, is thoroughly computer literate, and comes out to sea because he enjoys it, always did.


When this man, at such an early age, wants to hang up his boots in disgust now, even though he is absolutely fit, one wonders - what's really happening out there on ships?


Here are his words, in context with my previous article on the subject:-


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With reference to the essay on fatigue by Veeresh Malik:-


All above factors are inherent. Only counter measure has been stipulation of rest & work (R/W) hour duration by  (STCW). This is only a monitoring mode and does not address the root cause of fatigue. Also, be frank, this record of R/W is easily fudged or maintained to satisfy the monitors. There are multiple electronic and satellite based ways to keep track of this if required - even taxi and bus drivers now utilise these.


To attack, this word used specifically because it is killing the industry, the root cause:-


A) Safe manning:- This certificate is taken by owners and operators in collusion with the authorities as the only requirement to meet statutory manning needs. Once issued, it is seldom, if ever, reviewed by the flag state, and hardly ever by the port state, which eventually is the ultimate sufferer in case of an episode or damage.

1) This certificate is issued on basis of a ship being new and all systems and automation being in perfect operation. It does not consider the obvious effects of the age of the vessel where by ageing the original designed systems have degenerated, additional workloads due to excessive maintainance becomes a fact of life, and increase in excessive breakdown maintainance makes for massive issues which cannot even be described since often they involve the "chewing gum and baling wire" kind of "jugaad".

2) This certificate does not consider trading patterns and port turnaround times. By rights, a safe manning certificate should take this into account for different trade patterns, just like load lines. As a matter of fact, one wonders what Plimsoll's fate would have been if he had been around today, probably not survived the shipowner's lobbies! 

3) Workloads increase in adverse weather conditions like storms, ice navigation, restricted area navigation, STS operations etc. This has become even worse with climate change. Here again, what are the realities are well known, but where are the solutions that take these into account?

4) Manning level is maintained and certified at bare minimum for owners to save manning cost. That is a known fact.  When owners talk about safety margin in every aspect, then why can't the required safe manning also be increased to take this consideration to maintain a little higher level of manning? What, after all, are we talking about, 3-5 more people per ship?


Leaving this judgement to ship-managers and ship's staff (who are under the mercy of owners) surely leads to operating a vessel under manned for intended voyages. Fudging of work and rest records is then a natural follow-through to satisfy the monitors (PSC, FSIS, Class etcetc.)

In a scenario where a master opines that:-


(1) The vessel though meeting safe manning requirements of certificate is under manned for the intended voyage and delays voyage to meet requirement, (2) And then delays sailing due crew not sufficiently rested . . . then who will stand behind the Master's decision when it is in conflict with owners interest, rather ensure his continued employment? This also can be extended to a crew member who refuses to work beyond the rest work hour requirement.

SOLUTIONS

*1. Raising safe manning levels as safety margin basis age, condition, voyage of vessel as well as data gathered by automatic means. If retro-fitting of lifeboat capacity and accommodation is not possible, then conditions of class to apply.
*2. Immunity to Master who excercises his overriding authourity in meeting rest work hour periods requirement for Indian flag vessels as well as foreign flag operating under Indian DGS RPS Regulations.
*3. Penalty on owner or operators for flouting work rest hour periods. waiver or additional loading of insurance cover in above cases.
*4. Provision by regulators to receive formal as well as anonymous complaints about overwork on ships.

*5. Taking this forward to vessels calling Indian ports, as is increasingly happening in developed countries also.

B) Reduce factors increasing workloads:-

The industry seems to be believe only in inspection , monitoring n data generation as means of ensuring safety which in turn has increased workloads and information overloads. This in itself is self cancelling. To give an example:-  when a tanker/gas carrier calls port, these are the least level of activities:-

1. Customs, Immigration, Health  formalities. even today in times of computers and paperless technologies at least 1 ream and more is wasted generating papers required and equal amount of time (Most companies have passed on this load to Master / Other officers after making radio officer redundant after the introduction of GMDSS)

2. Port safety inspection

3. PSC or FSI, Coast Guard Inspection

4. Internal or external audit

5. Vetting/SIRE inspection. (On average, owners require to maintain 3 valid vettings (validity 6 months) some maintain more than six) no two SIRE inspection or 2,3,4 can be concurrent this inspection.

6. Company shore staff, Inspection, General Inspection, etc most companies have not less  than once every 6 month.

7. Class Surveys.

8. Various extensive other logistic activities like store, crew change,customs rummaging , repairs, etc etc.

All this takes places concurrent to critical cargo operation where most staff is keeping six on six off watches. Ships staff is over stressed and overworked prior arrival, in port preparing and undergoing these activities. (I challenge any one to meet R/W norms in above scenario.)

So, fact remains, vessels enter and vessels sail out with crew fatigue.


Earlier ports calls were rejuvenating.  By a way that seafarers could step ashore. have a change of food, atmosphere etc. Today we dread coming to port, and that is the simple truth, even if we get shore-leave we are treated as not just easy prey but also as criminals.

C) Information overload:-


ISM has added additional burden of paper work at sea. Number of checklists, procedures, records are being generated. Who ever says that ISM does not mean excess paper work is being very economical with the truth. At every audit a new checklist and a new procedure is added without evaluating its neccesity. There is no questioning or enquiry to audit observations. Checklist content has swelled up beyond practicality or rationale. Common seamanship practices have been lost and have become only items of checklist.


If a duty officer has to really comply to adhere and fill these up sincerely, she or he wont have time to look out of bridge front. 90% of checklists are filled up post operation to satisfy the auditors. If that is to be the case, then the office may as well send trainee managers to sail after doing basic STCW and get short-term CDC as purser, so that simultaneously they understand what life on the ships they may manage is really about.


New generation of quality managers ashore with minimal or no practical experience at sea are adding more and more to this garbage. Same people will ring-up to find out what time-zone the ship or port is in, what is the distance between ports or even simple questions to which answers are there in their own computers or files or books behind their tables.


And then there is the overload due to paperwork. To give an example with operational SVDR, ECDIS,e/r dataloger, digital echosounder with 30 days memory, we still maintain manual sounding log, gps log, e/rm movements etcetcetc. Even bus conductors where still left, or drivers, have better equipment, often hand-held. These documents are required as documentry evidence that officer is monitoring positions, soundings, engine movements, weather, everything. Additionaly we have new checklists as coastal navigation, CL tss, watch t/o checklist, ocean passage checklist . . . passage plan is written as thesis copy-pasted often without understanding. Important info is buried under this garbage. In open sea, middle of Pacific you have wheel over position marked and written in passage plan for 15 degrees course alteration.

Do these not contribute to fatigue at sea?


So, will somebody come forward to audit this information overload? And not just somebody who has been ashore forever. We require comptent Masters and Chief Engineers, not just those with Certificates of Competency, with recent seagoing experience (atleast 12 months in the last 5 years) to  trim this mess created by novices becoming quality manager by virtue of being good with Excell or Word and having done a 100% passing rate auditors course on time-pass basis.

D) LACK OF RECREATIONAL FACILITIES ONBOARD:-

There is no regulation to ensure recreation for seafarers on board. How many ships have a gymnasium onboard? A laser projector coasts peanuts now, but how many ships have a good auditorium for the complement? How many ships are fitted with omni directional tv dish antenna? How many owners give free access to emails, or have internet onboard? if at all given what are address and size limitations?

New ships are being launched with lesser and lesser amineties. this lack of recreational facility adds to fatigue, and is amongst the most important because the ship is the seafarers work place as well as home.

e) Alcohol

I have not yet seen any concrete data as to accidents related to alcohol abuse at sea. We
hear about stray incidences like EXXON VALDEZ, where Master though having claimed  to be consuming beer was not actually conning the ship at the time of the grounding. He was in the radio room, communicating with charterers and owners. 


Alcohol world over is considered to be a validated social medium. Not being under influence of alcohol when taking a responsible job is understandable. But why he should he be deprived of it when he has leisure time? It is uderstandable for pilots who maximum remain in the air for 12 hours. Offshore rig staff work on 15 days on 15 days off. A seafarern on an average today sails for 6 continuous months. Depriving him of this relief as leisure is adding to the fatigue
levels.


This has entirely destroyed social life onboard. Those who have to drink will manage to do so, in secret and alone, and that is worse. There use to be exchange of jokes, light moments and healthy interaction in onboard bars. It used to be a place to share happiness and sorrow. 


Today  we see grim faces only in alleyways, with no social contacts with fellow shipmates.

Depriving seamen of alcohol has been a major contributing factor to fatigue at sea. There can be norms for controliing abuse but to enforce 0 alcohol ploicy is not right. Surprisingly, no seafarer organisation has objected to this practice of 0 alcohol even at the cocktail parties thrown after discussing these issues at the many seminars on the subject.


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Finally, fatigue is one part , but creating unbearable conditions for seafarers on ship is the larger one. They both go hand in hand. This is dissuading good talent to come out to sea. The quality

of youth coming out to sea is falling. In 70's there used to be competition and only cream got to see sea. Today we are getting the residue. Worst to note is the pride of being a seamen is being lost. 

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e-Navigation and the Human Element - a report

Speaker after speaker at the Nautical Institute seminar on "E-Navigation and the Human Element" (New Delhi, 6th December 2011) waxed eloquent and more on the wonders of technology available onboard and more in the near future. Nobody, least of all your correspondent, denies the simple fact that new technology has to be introduced on ships to if nothing else, keep up with the real world out there. As a simple matter of fact, up until the '70s and even '80s, it was a given fact that merchant shipping along with civil aviation was ahead of the curve globally, as far as being early adopters of technology was concerned.

To just cite a few examples - merchant ships had facsimile machines using heat resistant paper, echo sounders using sonar, radars which moved on from valves and thence to double as well as multi sided PCBs, economisers later on known as turbo chargers ashore and environmental adherences well before these wonderful concepts came ashore in the '70s. The first computer many of us saw outside of IITs in India were on ships in the '70s and '80s. We had technology aboard to make pure water, serve us with clean electricity and provide us with brilliantly filtered air whether we were in the middle of the ocean or in the heavily polluted waters in some parts of the then developed world.

And then, somewhere down the line, technology on ships simply slipped behind the curve when compared with the rest of the world, as owners and the even more ruthless "ship-managers" along with compliant state authorities went along as accomplices bent on cutting costs on almost everything in the name of cost savings. Leave alone reducing head count, vicious chops were made not just as far as quality of life was concerned onboard, but also in keeping up with change and technological growth ashore - why, after all, was something needed if it was not legislated was the approach. It was almost like the attitude of truck owners - why improve matters for drivers, if all they have to do is deliver the goods to the other side - and if you make them suffer, they will work better.

For those of us lucky enough to sail with some ownership companies which thought otherwise, it was wonderful - as early as 1978, some of us who had sailed with Arya Lines, Blue Star or WorldWide, had worked on computers onboard, used situation display radars with television type colour monitors and were adhering to environmental norms ahead of what the ports demanded in those days. But then, it suddenly went bust, as the lowest common denominator fundamentals caught up with shipping globally, and from a career of choice, seafaring deteriorated to one of last resort.

One major reason for this drop-back as far as technology was concerned, ofcourse, was the advent of the internet globally around early 1990 and widely in India by 1995 - most Indian flag and FOC ships still don't have broadband on board, and the global figure for broadband onboard is below 7% of all merchant cargo ships. Even villages in totally backward countries have better penetration, never mind middle class homes in India, urban or rural. Likewise, the world of environmental compliances and adherences raced ahead ashore, while at sea it became a conspiracy of magic pipes and get the work done - never mind the pollution - even by hoodwinking everybody and by filling up more and more forms and reisters. Sad, but true.

The other reason, was simpler - the big recession in shipping in the mid-'80s brought forth a generation of seafarers who were simply not willing to rock the boat. Some of those same people form the backbone of senior seafarers onboard today, and they know the truths - the administration and unions will not back them, PSC in many countries are in the pockets of the owners and managers, and when it comes to a job, the typical seafarer is concerned only with what his wages will be like. And add to that the absolute backwardness of the training and certification system - the less said about that, the better. And on top of everything else, the famous "blacklist" now does better and goes global and even receives official patronage from the Government offices in shipping in India.

Ever wondered why there is no blacklist of owners and ship-managers? Simple - where else would the government babus go after they retire?

In the midst of all this, we now have a scenario where electorate generated noise and static in many countries is pushing administrations to the wall, and there is only so much mileage that can be achieved by criminalising the seafarer on board. The spotlight - and oh yes, shipowners, secretive creatures at the best of times hate the spotlight - is now looking for fresh victims, and after the recent episode of the RENA going aground off Taurongo in New Zealand, it is brilliantly clear to all that something is very wrong if ships have navigating bridges which resemble a hotch-potch of add-ons and ship-owners consider seafarers to be certificates acquired by any means who eat food.

A ship's bridge today is the best example of rampant confusion caused by a total lack of standarisation of design. Keep adding more stuff, keep deleting more people, and 100+ hours a week are standard. To that, add the simple fact that in many cases, the first exposure a seafarer has to a totally strange and new environment called his workplace and home, is often at the end of a long trans-continental flight, in the back of the plane known as cattle class, and thence straight to the airport without even a break. And then expected, often, to run a takeover as well as the regular business of work, right away. But this is all old hat, we seafarers know that this is our lot, and we do manage.

What is new here is that the "human element", which is the new name for seafarers, is now to hopefully be given due recognition by the maritime community ashore, at least up on the bridge, by something called "e-Navigation". Here's the IMO definition, and like everything from IMO, it goes into prose that is not just prolix but also confusing.

http://www.imo.org/OurWork/Safety/Navigation/Pages/eNavigation.aspx

"The aim is to develop a strategic vision for e-navigation, to integrate existing and new navigational tools, in particular electronic tools, in an all-embracing system that will contribute to enhanced navigational safety (with all the positive repercussions this will have on maritime safety overall and environmental protection) while simultaneously reducing the burden on the navigator. As the basic technology for such an innovative step is already available, the challenge lies in ensuring the availability of all the other components of the system, including electronic navigational charts, and in using it effectively in order to simplify, to the benefit of the mariner, the display of the occasional local navigational environment. E-navigation would thus incorporate new technologies in a structured way and ensure that their use is compliant with the various navigational communication technologies and services that are already available, providing an overarching, accurate, secure and cost-effective system with the potential to provide global coverage for ships of all sizes."


The seminar on e-Navigation and the Human Element organised by the Nautical Association's Delhi Chapter, held on the 6th of December, tried to delve further into the subject. The complete seminar has been video - recorded and the organisers have promised to put it up on the internet as well as web-stream it live next time in keeping with the theme - please wait for the information, till then you can check out the photos at http://www.flickr.com/photos/vm2827/ as well as chronologically in reverse order on photostream counted from here:- http://www.flickr.com/photos/vm2827/6465863359/in/photostream/

It would take a thick book, and defeat the purpose of e-Navigation onboard, to try and do justice to the various schools of thought propagated so well by people who had prepared very diligently to provide us with their views as well as those from the audience who actively gave theirs in what was an eminently inter-active experience - far removed from the usual "talk down to the audience" type of seminars that are usually the rule. As a matter of fact, if you were a seafarer and in or around Delhi, then you missed a great event by not being there - hats off to the organisers for that.

Those who spoke at the function, were:-

Capt. I.V. Solanki, who gave a welcome address, and outlined the proceedings.
Capt. M.M. Saggi, Nautical Advisor to the Indian government, who gave an overview of the present scenario on technology upgrading in all aspects of shipping in and around India.
A keynote address by Mr. John Erik Hagen, who is the Director NCA at IMO and Chairman of the committee on e-Navigation, and spoke about the IMO role therein.
A short speech by Ms. Kirsti Stotsvik, Director General of the Norwegian Coastal Administration, outlining a view from Scandinavia of the situation as they see it.
A very interesting point to point kind of talk by Capt. David Patraiko, Director of Projects of the Nautical Institute along with some basic ideas on the concept of e-Navigation as seen from a future bridge.
An extremely lively delivery by Capt. Rod Short of GlobalMET, straight shooter and now the seminar was finally heading toward the human element part of things.
A valid presentation on the new-generation seafarer by Ms. Naomi Rewari of ARI, which brought out some straight talking on the difference between fact and perceptions on young people at sea.
And then, the first of two open sessions, where the debate shifted from technology towards the human element, and back and forth.

All this, very cleanly moderated by Capt. Rakesh Saxena and Capt. I. Kharbanda, and with answers to some tough questions well fielded by those on the dais.

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After a sumptuous lunch, the gathering reconvened, and this was unlike at other seminars where people tend to drop off. The organisers, in another brilliant master stroke, brought two seafarers from the modern generation "Y", Sumit Puri (ASM candidate) and T.P. Shivaramakrishnan (Chief Officer) to speak on the subject. They chose to deliver their valid views, followed by Capt. S Butalia's excellent presentation on the Ship Manager's perspective.

This was followed by another interactive session co-ordinated by Capt. S. Verma of Ocean's XV - lively and educational.

But, and this is how it is at all such seminars, the one main topic of discussion and clarification which pertains to fatigue as well as quality of life on board was carefully skirted. Every attempt to stir the pot a bit by yours truly as well as the effervescent Capt. Rod Short from GlobalMET, was sweetly snooked by wellmeaning friends ashore.

Thus ended on a warm and friendly note the Delhi seminar on e-Navigation and the Human Element.

If you have any views, comments, suggestions on the subject, please write in to the author or directly to the Nautical Institute, IMO or your employers.