News

Authority irons out schedule issue

December 30, 2014 6:30 pm

The Maritime Safety Authority of Fiji has finalised a shipping schedule for the various ship operators in a meeting held last week.

This, after a ship owner raised concerns about the delays that a new vessel had caused.

Yesterday the chief executive of MSAF Neale Slack told FBC News that this could have been resolved amongst themselves.

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“Earlier this year we sat down with a series of operators and agreed on a particular schedule and with the introduction of the new vessel by Patterson Shipping; the Spirit of Altrusim we just had to needed to agree on a slot and not to interfere with any other vessel.”

He adds that while MSAF is the regulator, the onus is on operators to agree amongst themselves to a new schedule.

“What we do is we issue a costing trading license to allow vessels to operate in particular areas or routes and at the end of the day whilst we administer that it comes down to the good management by the masters of those vessels whilst there are schedules there are many conditions that can change at sea and sometimes those time slots just cannot be met for reasons beyond the control of those operators.”

The Authority is also the implementation of 34 new shipping regulations that come into effect next year.