Humiliation and difficulties experienced while getting DCE at MMD Mumbai

One of the most frequent inputs I get from seafarers, officer and crew, has to do with the issues faced by people at MMD and DGS offices all over the country. And of all these, one of the most frequent issues is the what should be simple job of getting a DCE endorsement from MMD.

Over here, the name of one specific person, "Captain Prashant Y. Manchalwar" keeps cropping up again and again. Not just from seafarers, but also from vetting inspectors abroad, who speak with the officers and crew.

Anybody else got any inputs on this before I publish the full report, please - because this one is seriously disturbing.

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Wow, got some more inputs including tapes on one Capt. R. Johri, also at MMD, Mumbai. What is happening? Need to check for authenticity as well as double check, but as of now, seems there is a price for everything at MMD.

Good heavens.

The mv PAVIT - yet another ship founders off Mumbai, a derelict this time!

http://www.moneylife.in/article/the-pavitmdashyet-another-attempt-to-hit-mumbai/18556.html

The Pavit—yet another attempt to hit Mumbai?
August 01, 2011 03:29 PM |
Veeresh Malik

 

The grounding of the Pavit off the coast of Mumbai cannot be, once again, attributed to bad weather and coincidence. It is amply clear that something is afoot, and that our security agencies are absolutely clueless—despite all the big talk—about what is happening right off our jetties and wharfs. Somebody or something is trying to do more than play marbles or video games with dead ships let loose near the city

What exactly is happening, why and how are derelict ships with suspicious antecedents drifting to Mumbai's shores, so frequently; and more importantly, what can be done about it?

The media is full of reports about how yet another ship is gracing the Mumbai coastline, and reports seem to centre around how a small tanker, the MV Pavit, with a lower freeboard, does not look as impressive as a not-so-large container ship with high cubics and taller freeboard. There is the usual reportage, the expected pass-the-buck kind of response, and the truth of course lies somewhere else. Here are some facts.

# About a month ago, towards the end of June 2011/early July 2011, the Pavit, (IMO number 9016636) with a complement of 13 Indians on board, on a voyage from the Persian Gulf towards Somalia, reported engine trouble and sought assistance after being adrift for three days. Read an account of the rescue operation in the report titled, (Fleet Air Arm helicopter rescues seamen off Oman.)

# The seafarers were transferred to another merchant ship, the Jag Pushpa, and repatriated to India. The Pavit was apparently left to her fate in the waters of the Arabian Sea. There are rumours that the Pavit was acting as a supplier of marine fuel to Somalia to facilitate piracy activity, and that this was one of the reasons why the crew chose to abandon the ship. Why the owner, or the insurers, did not send one of the many ocean-going rescue tugs to tow the ship back is not known.

# The Pavit, in all appearances, is a well-maintained ship. It is not old, either, or decrepit. If an engine failure for three days in mid-ocean meant seafarers started abandoning ships, then probably a large percentage of the world's fleet would have been derelict by now. The simple fact that the Pavit after she was abandoned did not sink, means that there was some intervention by somebody to ensure that she stayed afloat. This was likely by way of a tow as well as some basic minimal repairs in the reported leakage from the stern gland. Incidentally, stern glands leak all the time, and repairing them while at sea is a very normal and fairly simple practice.

# This time of the year, winds and currents do not push ships southwards down from the Omani coast towards India. Quite the opposite, actually, as any basic knowledge of what happens during the south-west monsoon will reveal. Even if it has drifted due to some freak weather, the prevailing tendency would have been to move towards the Gulf of Kutch. To reach without any assistance the coast of Mumbai is absolutely impossible.

# There is no information from the Director General of Shipping on whether an inquiry or investigation was carried out on the Indian crew and complement of the Jag Pushpa as well as the Pavit when they landed in India. There is no information on who the registered agents for the Pavit were, what information they may have provided about the status of the ship after it was abandoned, and most importantly, what attempts were being made, if any, to regain control of the Pavit.

So, what could have been done?

# A dead ship drifting around in one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world is certain to have been noticed by a vast variety of ships and reported in. Especially if she was not transmitting any recognition signals on her AIS (automatic identification signals). However, if she was transmitting her AIS, then certainly there was somebody, somewhere who was tracking her as she got closer and closer to the Indian coast; this is standard operating procedure for owners and insurers.

# One of the easiest measures would be for satellite tracking of all ships which are within 12 miles, or even more, of the Indian coast. This data is freely available. The big question is which agency will take this data, analyse it, spot the odd ones out which are not transmitting their AIS signals, or are too close without any business to be there? A proposal that seafarers, who are between exams, to be deputed to handle such information under a Vessel Tracking Scheme has been hanging fire for decades now, as the assorted ministries still try to get their act together.

# Rescue co-ordination, even if done in the Indian Ocean by a British warship, is monitored in India. The Jag Pushpa, by law, is supposed to provide full information on the episode to the Indian authorities. This information then becomes the core of an inquiry and investigation, especially since the seafarers on the Pavit were also Indians, and this could easily have provided ample advance information on the true antecedents of the Pavit as well as the shape of things to come.

Interim, on the basis of educated opinion as well as circumstantial evidence, it can safely be surmised that this ship, also, was somehow brought to within miles of the Mumbai coast and then released. That it landed on the coast of Juhu and not somewhere else, is more a question of nature favouring us again than anything else.

So, how many of us are there in the vastness of the oceans out there, then?

There is no cogent number on how many seafarers there are in the world, simply because there is a vast range - mainstream ocean going ships, armed forces, research vessels, coastal fleets, inshore transport, pleasure craft, support services, port auxiliaries, and the rest of it. Then, add to this, the vast number of "ir-regulars", from pirates in the Indian Ocean to people forced to work on fishing boats, and on to pure and simple "unknown ventures". The last known figure for seafarers on mainstream ships alone was about 1.2 million, by BIMCO - but way back in 2005. The ballpark figure for seafarers of all sorts, worldwide,  qualified in some form or the other, is around 4-6 million - and may well be more if one takes into account the number of people who are at sea variously and absolutely unqualified.

Add to this the number of people from other trades who, for one reason or the other, also work on ships - as inspectors, security personnel, repair workers, hospitality workers on cruise ships and similar - and can be said to have acquired reasonable seafaring skillsets - and you have an even bigger pool of people who can, in some way or the other, work on ships. And who will, obviously, impact the supply-demand economics. Ideally, much of this group of people should have been organised, in one way or the other. Truth is, the number of seafarers who are part of any ITF affiliated agreements, is said to be around 600,000 (ITF, 2010). So, at a modest estimate, almost 90% of the people who are "at sea" are really that - disorganised groups of people without direction or collective strengths.

Organised or otherwise - and it is important to remember that the global bastion of worker rights, People's Republic of China, does not permit its seafarers to be part of unions - all seafarers share one thing in common, though - being party to the tendency and economic requirement on the part of the owner and operator to always keep cutting costs. Sure, suitable noises are made about "quality", but if you compare quality of life ashore in other professions with the way quality of life onboard has evolved for the seafarer over the last few decades, then one thing is clear - the shipowners of the world are absolutely aware of how the largely "open register" system of ship-owning works towards making the seafarer a commodity which can be exploited almost at will.

There is yet another deeper issue at play - if salaries at sea are increased, and quality of life improved, then more people from the costlier developed countries will want to come to sea. These people will then certainly be well organised, as well as lobby with good success rates with governance in their own countries, to ensure reservations and jobs for themselves. However, at the same time, higher salaries will also lead to more qualified people from these countries coming to sea - and then leaving seafaring early. Because (i) they would have saved up enough in a short time and (b) their qualifications would find a ready market ashore.

This, if you are a shipowner looking at a bottomline before anything else, is disaster. First you spend a lot of money training up a lot of expensive people which will also make your ships uncompetitive. Next, these very people will move on rapidly, leading the shipowner into a fresh spiral of high training costs. So, basic truth Number One if you want to be a succesful shipowner is to ensure that the system works to keep seafaring as an inferior career choice, depending more on people coming in from poorer countries, where some minimum levels of competency can be obtained. After that, they have to ensure that their ships are able to employ such people, which is where the conflict between "better than just technically seaworthy" and "open reigster" comes in.

Are we, then, likely to see an improvement in quality of life at sea and for seafarers in the near future? Or will it always be a situation where salary is driven by supply/demand as well as cyclical surplus/deficit scenarios, tweaked around a tipping point, where 2% makes all the difference between good times and bad?

The answer, as always, is not as simple as pure numbers would lead many of us to believe. Here are some possibilities that may impact things:-

# The "Black Swan" effect - where a logical but unseen effect may suddenly cause a huge change in seafarer dynamics. Increasing prices of oil, shut-down of a major trade route, unpredictable weather, and more. The lessons of Suez Canal being shut down in the '70s are not all that far behind us, nor the effects of the various defaults and failures in the financial markets, or simply the possible effects of more regulations impacting shipping.

# Higher unemployment ashore in many countries, including the traditional seafaring countries in Europe which saw seafaring going on the back-burner, which could see more people come "back to sea". This, incidentally, is already being observed in England and Scandinavia. Shipowners will always prefer people from their own countries, choosing to save on the foreigners they end up hiring - sanctified by ITF, by the way.

# The faint chance that life at sea may well become better soon - with better communications, lesser working hours, bigger complements on board and most of all - introduction of suitable relevant HR practices pertaining to seafarers more than "crewing department" kind of treatment most seafarers are subjected to. Another simple truth and influencing factor - the freshest air is still what you get at sea.

In all this and more, morality and ethics have hardly any role to play, especially as far as shipowners and operators are concerned. The drivers are always, but always, purely economic. Due sounds are made, of course, towards flags and nations - but if true beneficial ownerships are analysed, then these seldom, if ever, stand any test of truth.

The seafarer, on the other hand, is expected to perform at sea as per a variety of unwritten traditions, the most important one being "ship before self". Never mind double book-keeping on wages, substandard food, tremendous over-work. The psychological demand on seafarers is simply unrelated to the reality of numbers whether onboard or ashore.

What, then, is the solution for seafarers? Or are they destined to keep on sailing, generation after generation, with working conditions aimed at keeping them in what is known as "inferior goods" conditions? Truth be told, again, seafaring jobs do tend to fall into the category of "inferior goods", witness the drastic decline in basic courtesies and respect (not) being extended to seafarers by "authorities" worldwide. Be it restrictions on shore leave, criminalisation, or simply the way the juniormost of Customs or Immigration or Health or other categories of people who visit ships officially treat them, it is very clear that the seafarer commands less respect in some case now than, say, a State Transport bus driver. Sad, hard words - but true.

SAILOR TODAY welcomes responses from seafarers - what ARE the solutions, if any? Or is seafaring as a career on a continuous downward spiral, to end up, as have other professions in the past, at the bottom of the options pool - activated only when economic realities ashore become bad?

Bob Couttie's Marine Accident Casebook online

So how often has your company called you for a seminar, conference or meeting, to discuss accidents at sea and how to prevent them? And how often do they turn into finger pointing sessions, with the main real issues never being resolved? And then, the findings on accidents at sea, after all those investigations, never see the light of day.

Compare this with aviation, where every accident report is not just publicly available, but increasingly available in print and other formats - in mess rooms, briefing rooms, magazines, everywhere.

Bob Couttie's resource on the internet, found here:-
http://maritimeaccident.org/
tries to do exactly that.

Find time to go through it. Register for better access, free, and subscribe to his newsletter.

There was a day and age when Walport would not pick up Poseidon for viewing on ships. Matter of fact, in this day and age, it may be very relevant to show marine accidents and rescue films onboard.

And he has a very apt lifeboat survey up and running now, here:-

http://maritimeaccident.org/survey/index.php?sid=41249&lang=en

This one is for seafarers, and you are requested to take part, don't say you don't have a voice.

Thank you, Bob Couttie.