Evidence that grounded ship Rena had “multiple deficiencies”

The Mar­itime Union is ask­ing that Mar­itime New Zealand release to the pub­lic any of their reports on the Rena after infor­ma­tion was uncov­ered show­ing the ship had mul­ti­ple prob­lems, includ­ing with its charts.

The 236m car­go ves­sel Rena struck the Astro­labe Reef, near Tau­ran­ga Har­bour, around 2.20am on 5 Octo­ber. The Astro­labe Reef is about 4 nau­ti­cal miles north of Moti­ti Island (about 12 nau­ti­cal miles off the coast).

The Mar­itime Union has received infor­ma­tion that an inspec­tion of the ves­sel in Bluff by Mar­itime New Zealand (for­mer­ly Mar­itime Safe­ty Author­i­ty) found mul­ti­ple defi­cien­cies on the Rena on 28 Sep­tem­ber 2011.

These report­ed defi­cien­cies includ­ed prob­lems with the charts – a pos­si­ble clue as to how the ves­sel may have end­ed up run­ning into the Astro­labe Reef at top speed.

Mar­itime Union Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary Joe Fleet­wood says the ground­ing of the Rena has devel­oped into a major mar­itime event with an increas­ing dan­ger of very seri­ous out­comes, with threats from oil and chem­i­cal spillage, the safe evac­u­a­tion of crew and the pos­si­bil­i­ty the ves­sel will break up, cre­at­ing a major ship­ping haz­ard.

“As a Union our first con­cern is that the crew are safe and well and no one is endan­gered in the sal­vage oper­a­tion. But we also want to quick­ly get answers that throw some light on why we are in this sit­u­a­tion in the first place.”

Mr Fleet­wood says he would like a pub­lic state­ment from Mar­itime New Zealand to con­firm whether it was aware of prob­lems with the ship, includ­ing charts, and if so, why was the Rena still sail­ing on the New Zealand coast.

“Our view is that the unreg­u­lat­ed nature of Flag of Con­ve­nience glob­al ship­ping will be shown to be the under­ly­ing cause of what has hap­pened. We have ves­sels on the New Zealand coast that are not up to scratch.”

Accord­ing to our source, fur­ther defi­cien­cies on the Rena not­ed by Mar­itime New Zealand includ­ed:

• Fixed fire extin­guish­ing instal­la­tion
• Main­te­nance of the ship and equip­ment
• Obstruction/slipping, etc.
• Propul­sion main engine
• Doors with­in main ver­ti­cal zone
• Cov­ers (hatchway‑, portable‑, tar­pau­lins, etc.)
• Gang­way, accom­mo­da­tion lad­der
• Charts
• Light­ing
• Safe means of access
• Stowage of lifeboats
• Emer­gency Fire Pump
• Rail­ing, cat walks
• Oth­er (radio)
• Lifeboat inven­to­ry
• Fire-dampers
• Aux­il­iary engine

Many of these defi­cien­cies are sim­i­lar to prob­lems report­ed by the Aus­tralian Mar­itime Safe­ty Author­i­ty dur­ing inspec­tions of the Rena in Aus­tralia.

The Rena is a Liber­ian flagged, Greek owned Flag of Con­ve­nience car­go ship cov­ered by an ITF (Inter­na­tion­al Trans­port Work­ers Fed­er­a­tion) agree­ment. The crew as at 28 Sep­tem­ber 2011 are 25 Fil­ipinos.

Mr Fleet­wood says that the Union has iden­ti­fied numer­ous prob­lems on Flag of Con­ve­nience ves­sels on the New Zealand coast over many years.

He says that there have been a num­ber of seri­ous inci­dents on over­seas fish­ing and car­go ves­sels, includ­ing FOC ves­sels, in New Zealand ports and in and around New Zealand waters in recent years.

“We have had ongo­ing inci­dents rang­ing from under­pay­ment of wages, fail­ure for crews to be returned home at the end of their con­tracts, mis­treat­ment and abuse, all the way up to seri­ous injuries and deaths, and the sink­ing of ves­sels.

Flag of Con­ve­nience (FOC) ves­sels are reg­is­tered in coun­tries with very lax or non-exis­tent reg­u­la­tion of the mar­itime indus­try.

FOCs pro­vide a means of avoid­ing labour reg­u­la­tion in the coun­try of own­er­ship, and become a vehi­cle for pay­ing low wages and forc­ing long hours of work and unsafe work­ing con­di­tions.