Holes in official accounts of Rena’s seaworthiness

The Mar­itime Union has renewed calls for inspec­tion reports on the Rena to be made pub­lic and for clar­i­fi­ca­tion of what a Mar­itime New Zealand inspec­tion involves.

Mar­itime Union of New Zealand Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary Joe Fleet­wood says it is still unclear what type of inspec­tion was car­ried out on the Rena in Bluff by Mar­itime New Zealand on 28 Sep­tem­ber 2011.

“Was this Mar­itime New Zealand inspec­tion a full inspec­tion of all areas of con­cern that had been picked up in Chi­na or Aus­tralia, or was it sim­ply a chat to the Mas­ter and accep­tance of what­ev­er he said? Let’s see the paper­work.”

Mr Fleet­wood says numer­ous issues with the Rena had been picked up in Aus­tralia and Chi­na over pre­ced­ing months lead­ing to the ship being detained. These had includ­ed sev­er­al safe­ty of nav­i­ga­tion issues.

He says the real issue is the pow­er of ship oper­a­tors and char­ter­ers, and inad­e­quate con­trols by ports and nation­al mar­itime author­i­ties.

“Mas­ters are held hostage to the demands of the char­ter­ers and own­ers, which is where the real respon­si­bil­i­ty lies, but those at the top are almost untouch­able.”

Mr Fleet­wood says one area which had not been dis­cussed so far is how the hec­tic sched­ule of the Rena call­ing into mul­ti­ple New Zealand ports in a short win­dow of time may have caused crew fatigue.

“There is mas­sive pres­sure on crews com­ing on from char­ter­ers and own­ers. Will charges be laid at the high­est lev­el or will the crew be made to be scape­goats while the big boys walk free and the tax­pay­er car­ries the cost of the clean up?”

Mr Fleet­wood says he is con­cerned about the removal of crew mem­bers of the Rena from New Zealand.

He does not accept on face val­ue the claim that this is for the crews own safe­ty, as New Zealand had a police force that pre­sum­ably was able to look after a few crew mem­bers.

“Our expe­ri­ence in the fish­ing and mar­itime indus­try is that agents and char­ter­ers, act­ing in con­cert with the author­i­ties, are often in a huge hur­ry to get crews out of the coun­try in sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tions to this.”

“We believe this is large­ly to do with min­i­miz­ing the pub­lic­i­ty and pos­si­bil­i­ty of legal action. Is this anoth­er smoth­er up going on here?”

Mr Fleet­wood says the Fil­ipino com­mu­ni­ty should have noth­ing to fear fol­low­ing the Rena dis­as­ter, after reports of con­cerns for their safe­ty.

“I have nev­er heard any­thing so stu­pid than New Zealan­ders who want to blame Fil­ipinos for this dis­as­ter. Most of the crew on the ship have no con­trol over its nav­i­ga­tion, and at this stage the arrest­ed offi­cers have not been con­vict­ed of any­thing, let alone peo­ple who aren’t any­thing to do with the ship.”

Mr Fleet­wood says if peo­ple want­ed to vent their frus­tra­tion, it should be done in a strong and force­ful way at the present and past New Zealand Gov­ern­ments and author­i­ties who have allowed sub­stan­dard flag of con­ve­nience ves­sels to con­tin­u­al­ly trade on the New Zealand coast.

He says peo­ple inter­est­ed in the back­ground of the ship­ping issues should check out the MUNZ web­site (www.munz.org.nz) and the flag of con­ve­nience infor­ma­tion on the web­site of the Inter­na­tion­al Trans­port Work­ers Fed­er­a­tion (www.itfglobal.org)

ENDS

For more infor­ma­tion con­tact Mar­itime Union of New Zealand Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary Joe Fleet­wood on 021364649