Black Sea MoU Launches Rest Campaign

The six member authorities of the Black Sea Memorandum of Understanding on Port State Control will start a concentrated inspection campaign (CIC) on STCW Hours of Rest. 

The states, Bulgaria, Georgia, Romania, Russian Federation, Turkey and Ukraine, have agreed that the three-month campaign will start on September 1, 2014 and end on November 30, 2014 under the co-ordination of the General Directorate of Maritime and Inland Water Transport of the Republic of Turkey Ministry of Transport and Communication. 

The campaign will be conducted simultaneously with the Paris MOU, Tokyo MOU and other MOUs. During the campaign period, member authorities of the MOU will inspect, within the resources available, as many ships as possible in conjunction with routine port state control inspections. They will check deck and engine room watchkeepers’ hours of rest under STCW 78 as amended. 

For the purpose of interregional harmonization of the action, the Black Sea MOU will use the model of relevant questionnaire developed by the Paris & Tokyo MOUs with a checklist of 9 selected areas for deck and engine room watch keepers’ hours of rest, some of which are related to record keeping and safe manning. Furthermore there are additional questions aimed to gather information about the existence of the two watch system, requirements for engineer officers and Unattended Machinery Space. 

If deficiencies are found, actions by the Port State Control Officer may vary from recording a deficiency and instructing the master to rectify it within a certain period to detaining the ship until serious deficiencies have been rectified. All inspections will be inserted in the Black Sea Information System and will be published on-line and in the monthly detention list of the BS MOU. The results of the campaign shall be analyzed and findings will be presented to the Black Sea MOU Committee for submission to the IMO.