Belize joins Caribbean Port State Committee

Little has been heard of this organization, and today Belize became the newest member of the Caribbean M.O.U. Port State Control Committee, which deals with issues pertaining to inspections of vessels entering Belizean waters. The Committee has been meeting over the past twelve years and this week they are in Belize. And what exactly does membership mean for Belize?

Major Lloyd Jones, Ports Commissioner
“These are inspections that are conducted on foreign vessels that call on your ports. So for example, if a foreign ship comes to Belize we have the right to go onboard that vessel, to inspect that vessel and to ensure that it is in compliance with the various international maritime conventions. If it is not there are various measures that you take that are called control measures to ensure that the vessel falls in line. The idea really is to prevent sub-standard ships from coming to your port.”

Marion Ali
“How were we dealing with those before now?”

Major Lloyd Jones
“Well, I came to the office of commissioner in 2004. At that time we were not doing any of those inspections. I think we did one inspection in 2005 and since then we have increased—we’ve hired four persons to work as port state control officers and we’ve had them trained. One has trained in the United States with the U.S. Coastguard, one has trained in the Caribbean and there is a lot of in-house training that goes on as well.”

Ivor English, Chairman, Caribbean M.O.U. Port State Control Comm.
“The country wanting to become a full member needed to have the well established functioning maritime administration and the country must be involved in port state control inspection. In order to do that, the country is also expected to ratify a number of key international maritime conventions such as the SOLAS Convention, Tonnage Regulations, the Marpol Convention etcetera. At this meeting Belize is going to be accepted as a full member of the C.M.O.U. because in February of this year we sent a fact finding mission in Belize to make a careful examination as to Belize administration to see whether they were in fact responding to the dictates of the C.M.O.U. We are satisfied that Belize has in place the requisite institutional arrangements and the technical personnel to discharge their functions.”