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