Port State Controls to Focus on Cargo Lashing

The Black Sea, Tokyo and Paris MOUs will start a concentrated inspection campaign on cargo securing arrangements from September 1.
 
The campaign is aimed to verify that there is compliance with the procedures and measures that are in place on cargo securing arrangements on board ships meeting applicable requirements of the SOLAS and related guidelines.

The Black Sea MOU says that its six member authorities (Bulgaria, Georgia, Romania, Russian Federation, Turkey, Ukraine) will inspect as many ships as possible in conjunction with routine port state control inspections. 

The MOUs will use a questionnaire developed by the Tokyo MOU with a checklist of 10 selected questions designed to establish that crew members with cargo securing duties are familiar with relevant equipment and documents and understand the hazards associated with cargo securing operations.

The results of the campaign will be presented to the IMO.

A joint concentrated inspection campaign will be conducted on safety of navigation in 2017, and one on air emissions (MARPOL Annex VI) will be conducted in 2018.