Port State control inspection was carried out if there were any complaints of unseaworthiness of the ship or its equipment, by the crew or any other interested party before 1990. So we can say that port State control existed in India but mostly on complaint basis. Nowadays it is mandatory for a port State control officer to carry out certain numbers of inspections every month.
A brief report on the development of port State control in India.
Due to the increase of workload resulting from amendments to various conventions and introduction of new conventions, and limited number of surveyors not commensurate with the growth in tonnage, port State control was not getting much attention as flag State was fairly active on flag State implementation. Now port State control has been taken up seriously, and much more is to be done, to reach the target and to have an effective system to cover all the ports.
Most of the statutory work has been delegated to the leading classification societies so that more time can be devoted to port State control so as to achieve the minimum
target. Inspections of machinery and equipment are no more carried out by the Administration surveyors. The surveyors of the Administration are still carrying out inspections for issuance of Safety equipment certificate. General inspections are also carried out during that time. If the ship is at foreign port the classification society surveyors carry out the inspection for safety equipment.
The status of Indian Shipping in the international scene during 1992 was not very encouraging. Under the Paris MOU India featured first in the 21 States selected for priority inspection Indian ships detention percentage was 27.87 % as compared to the world’s average of 5.62%. Appropriate measures were immediately introduced by the Administration to improve the status of Indian shipping. Detained ship history was probed. Deficiencies observed on ships were analyzed on quarterly and annual basis and reports were circulated amongst shipowners and surveyors in field offices. Meetings were held with the shipowners and classification societies whenever necessary and fresh guidelines were issued to the Administration surveyors.
It was also observed that majority of the vessels detained were bulk carriers and vessels on cross trade. It was not possible for Administration Surveyors to inspect these vessels as they rarely called into Indian ports and conditions of the vessels were not known. Renewal of statutory certificates for the vessels on cross trade were carried out by classification societies on behalf of the Administration The trend of deficiencies observed on board Indian flag vessels were similar to the trend world over and detentions were fairly on genuine grounds. The trend of MOU’S had just started, as such, standard of inspections were not uniform the world over and in many States the port State control officers were not adequately qualified or trained. Measures taken by the Administration did bring some desired effect in the standard of vessels and the percentage of detention dropped as follows;
• Detention under Paris MOU steadily declined to 3.5% in the Year 1996. • India is no longer on the priority list of Paris MOU.
• Under US Coast Guard Indian vessels detention % was only 0.26% over the average detention % in 1996 (DGS).
Table 3C: Details of Indian Vessels Detained by Various port State control Authorities
Year Total vessels detained
Paris MOU Tokyo MOU USCG Others
1994 24 17 4 3 - 1995 21 8 8 5 - 1996 18 2 10 6 - 1997 16 7 3 4 2 1998 9 1 6 1 1 1999 19 11 4 3 1 Source: DGS
The reports received from the Paris MOU for 1997 were reflecting more on operational deficiencies. This was brought to the notice of the masters of the ships and the Administration also started interacting with senior officers of the ships besides the shipowners.
More attention was paid to port State control as the effect of different MOU’s on port State control on the Indian ports was felt. The number of substandard ships calling at Indian ports increased, as it was difficult for such ships to operate in the other regions due to effective port State control regime.
Table 3D: Port State and Flag State Inspections Details
Year Flag State Port State Inspection
Inspections Ships
Inspected Ships founddeficient DetainedShips
1993 73 16 6 Nil 1994 107 56 28 Nil 1995 164 182 78 42 1996 171 178 136 75 1997 194 321 172 120 1998 235 545 236 183 1999 102 347 204 158 Source: D.G. Shipping.
As observed from table 3D above, the total number of foreign flag vessels inspected were 347 and the total number detained 158, which is around 45% of the total number of inspections carried out. If there was no port State control, these substandard vessels would have been operating with deficiencies; owners would not have bothered to rectify them.
Hopefully with the Indian Ocean MOU in place the percentage may increase. The Administration is taking steps to increase the number of qualified and trained surveyors to increase port State inspection to at least 15%.
Table 3E: Flag of the vessels that had more numbers of detentions is listed:
Flag No. vessels
inspected
No. of vessels with deficiencies No. of vessels detained % of detention Bahamas 4 4 2 50 Belize 3 3 3 100 Cyprus 16 16 7 45 Honduras 2 2 1 50 Liberia 5 5 3 60 Malta 12 12 6 50 Panama 30 6 20 St. Vincent 40 40 27 67.5 Source: DGS
Apart from the above flags, ships of different flags were found deficient but their percentage was much less then the flags detailed in the above table.
According to a news item in the UK P&I Club bulletin, authorities in Mumbai are being very strict regarding substandard ships and taking their responsibilities for implementation of port State control very seriously (UK P& I Club).
India has a vast coastline, with major ports located on the East and West Coast. There are still some ports where Administration does not have a local office and the surveyor has to travel a long distance to cover such ports. At such locations port
increased tremendously, new ports have developed, tankers traffic has increased due to new oil refineries. There are about 7 minor ports in the region, which require more attention by port State control.
Being one of the oldest maritime States in the Indian Ocean India will have to play a major role in eradicating substandard ships in the region. At the same time India have to strengthen its flag State regime so as to maintain the requisite level of standard on their ships.
India has ratified most of the major Conventions of IMO, as detailed in Annex 3.and also of ILO. Most of the statutory work has been delegated to seven international classification societies apart from the Indian register of shipping. The role of classification society is very important in maintaining the standard of the ships. It shall be discussed in the next chapter.