Annual conference will take place in the Philippines this October and focus on safety
By
Rebecca Gibson |
IMO secretary-general Kitack Lim is to give a keynote speech at Interferry’s 41st annual conference in Manila this October, marking a decade of cooperation between the two organisations to help improve domestic ferry safety in developing nations.
The Interferry 2016 conference will be held on 17-18 October during a five-day event, which starts on 15 October and includes various networking opportunities and a technical tour onboard a FastCat vessel. Only three Interferry conferences have been held outside Europe and the Americas since the event was last held in the Philippines in 1999. This year’s venue was inspired by key statistics on membership and casualties.
“The global ferry industry carries more than two billion passengers per year and close to half of these are in SE Asia,” said Darrell Bryan, interim CEO at Interferry. “In contrast, only 22% of our members are from Asia, the Pacific and Africa, so we are determined to recruit in these regions – not least to extend our safety initiative in the developing world, where the vast majority of serious ferry incidents take place. Our invitation to Kitack Lim aims to boost both these objectives by allowing a lot of potential members to hear and meet him close to home.”
Interferry’s conference will be hosted by Archipelago Philippine Ferries, whose founder Chet Pastrana is the current Interferry president. During a dedicated Asia Pacific session, Pastrana will describe how his FastCat brand has enhanced safety and service levels with the first ferry fleet to be purpose-built for the Philippines.
A global line-up of speakers will also discuess safety issues, such as vessel design, propulsion systems, alternative fuels, automated mooring and anti-fouling coatings, ticketing IT, urban waterways, legal insights and risk assessment.
Joining regional authorities from Indonesia and Bangladesh, Captain Nurur Rahman, Papua New Guinea’s maritime safety operations manager, will examine why 95% of ferry fatalities occur in developing countries. Citing sub-standard vessels, lack or sluggish enforcement of rules, inadequate training, overloading and poor weather forecasting, he said: “Developing economies do not have the financial capacity that is absolutely necessary to address the challenges of minimising fatalities at sea.”
Australian maritime publisher and chairman of corporate responsibility alliance at the World Ocean Council Neil Baird will present his research into every known casualty over the past 50 years. The reserach shows that more than 90% of the accidents and deaths are directly attributable to human error.
“The causes are overwhelmingly behavioural and cultural rather than structural or mechanical and should be preventable,” Baird said. “My proposed improvements in passenger vessel design, construction, outfitting, regulation and operation should not be prohibitively costly and should lead to significant reductions in the number of accidents and the arising death toll.”
Michael Niemann, fleet manager at Australia’s SeaLink Travel Group, will outline a best practice strategy for domestic ferries based on universal uniformity of standards.
“Countries such as the US, UK and Australia administer their own domestic ferry regulations that are similar in intent but still lack global acceptance and standardisation,” he said. “Globally accepted standards would not only benefit the developed world but would also provide sound guidance for emerging nations in reducing the risk of incidents. We should agree on the outcomes while recognising the economic aspects of making them practical and effective.”
Murray Goldberg, founder and CEO of Marine Learning Systems, will review BC Ferries’ SailSafe joint management and union scheme , and its Standardized Education and Assessment programme, which was created to blend e-learning with face-to-face training. “It is not coincidental that accidents have dropped by close to 60%, injuries and days lost due to injury have dropped by the same amount, and insurance claims costs have plummeted,” said Goldberg.