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| 1990 article (Michael Grey in Lloyd's List) |
I have no doubt about what will happen next in the quarter-century
old ongoing farce that propagates the notion that shipping has taken concrete steps
to stop crews suffering chronic fatigue immediately- and finally. For those who
do not believe that this travesty is at least that old, I post, as I had done
here a few years ago- a scan of a 1990 article from Lloyds List written by the always
delightful Michael Grey. It is titled ‘Fatigue facts jolt shipping.’
Twenty-five years later, like Bond’s martini, shipping
continues to be shaken, not stirred, by this issue of fatigue.
Three years ago, after those of us at sea had already suffered
years of chronic fatigue backed by rubber stamped (by the Flag State) Minimum
Safe Manning Certificates and fabricated rest hour spreadsheets (I told one
manager that filling those sheets was making me fatigued), the IMO adopted yet
another resolution that would solve our problems. It revised the Principles of
Safe Manning, where it did its usual urging, recommending, and requesting
before coming to the critical point known forever to sailors- that the safe
manning of a ship needed to take into account more than just navigation and emergencies.
Properly manned ships should, the recommendations said, take into account ship
specialisation, level of automation, frequency of port calls, length of
voyages, crew involvement in cargo operations, the ship’s security plan
requirements- and, course, the two biggies, maintenance and administrative work.
As usual, barring a few countries, nobody paid much
attention to the IMO, which consequently made some amendments to SOLAS and ISM,
effectively seeking to make things mandatory. These changes- that redefined the
concept of safe manning- will come into force next month, a fact that has quite
a few quite excited. Including the ITF, which says that Flag
States and shipowners must now safely and transparently meet the unique
operational and administrative needs of each vessel.
Hah.
If only I had a penny for every time I have heard similar sentiment, I would
not need to be fatigued anymore. I have faith in the system, though- a faith
that nothing much will change soon. That faith is reinforced by those shoreside
creative geniuses today who are creating paper showing crew overtime as
‘bonus’, to avoid Port State scrutiny of actual crew working hours; no doubt
they will come up with more such gems.
My
critics tell me, however, that things have changed, and that- also with the
MLC- crew issues like fatigue are at
least now strongly on the industry’s agenda. That may be so, but my rebuttal to
that is that the enemy of action is not inaction; the enemy is insidious inordinate
delay and selective or self-serving implementation.
So, for my money, nothing substantial will change- or it
will change so slowly that the next generation of seafarers will be dead, or at
least gone from the industry, before anything useful really happens. For my
money, the game- the dance, if you prefer- will go on. The IMO recommends. A
couple of years pass, during which duplicitous owners and managers and a lethargic
and an inconsistent Port State apparatus conspire to selectively and cleverly circumvent
the recommendations. In response, the IMO toughens up. It deliberates and eventually
mandates new regulations to be effective a year or two down the line. More
years pass, with everybody congratulating themselves that the problem has been
solved. Then, at the dawn of the implementation date of the new regulation, two
things happen. One, most in the industry creatively and maliciously tries to
dilute the regulations, pushing the envelope as much as is possible. Two, sundry
noise is made by assorted interested parties about facets of the impending
deadline that are detrimental to their partisan interests.
Then, to complete the never-ending circle, a couple of years
later- by now, around a decade later since the latest round of the game began- the
IMO tries to plug regulatory loopholes and
recommends changes. The next round of the game is then on; everybody
goes back to step A. Everybody starts dancing again.
I once had a dog that used to chase its tail with
impassioned concentration, whirling endlessly round and round in my living
room, not even stopping after he bumped into furniture and hurt himself. He
played the game for abnormally long periods. He used to end up fatigued, panting
heavily with his tongue hanging out of the side of his mouth.
The poor mutt never caught his tail. I often wondered if he
really wanted to.
.
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