Dias Marine Consultants Co Ltd, our correspondents in Ukraine, has provided us with the following information:
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We have already notified P&I Clubs, shipowners and charterers about problems independent surveyors encounter when trying to get passes to the port of Yuzhnyy. You may remember that the surveyors can only have permanent permits to the piers used for loading of urea in bulk. The port authorities do not grant permanent permits allowing entrance to the piers where iron ore concentrates or steel cargoes are being loaded. As per the requirements of the security service of the port a surveying company shall apply to the port’s administration for such permits at least three days before the ship’s arrival to the port. At that only official working days are meant, week-ends and holidays excluding.
Such procedure suits the cargo interests’ surveyors fully because all their jobs required by the sales contracts are planned beforehand and the days of the ships’ calls are also known in good time, etc.
But independent surveyors can hardly work adequately under such conditions as their appointment is not often planned in advance, but may be induced by an unexpected situation or emergency, such as most of the P&I cases: damage to pier (port crane or other port equipment), oil pollution, stevedore damage cases, etc. If there is a dispute on the quantity of the loaded cargo between the ship’s administration and the loading terminal the shipowner as a rule is willing to do an independent draft survey and calls for a P&I surveyor to determine the quantity of the cargo already loaded on board and in such case a surveyor must get on board without any delay which is impossible under the present status quo.
In addition to all those problems some more difficulties related to obtaining of temporary permits to the port were created to the surveyors, this time by the Port’s Customs and Immigration Authorities. Now they require that the permits for surveyors were obtained by them personally, and not by the ship’s agents (as it always was). This means that in order to get on board a ship a surveyor must come and personally file application and all necessary papers to the Custom’s office (no faxes or e-mails are accepted). After the Customs’ “visa” is granted (what takes about one working day) the documents shall be forwarded – handed over also personally by a surveyor – to the Immigration Authorities’ office. This takes another day. When a permit is finally given a surveyor shall take it to the office of the ship’s agent who will then file the documents to the port’s security service.
Thus, a surveyor shall take 3 trips to the port (which is about 300 km as round trip to Yuzhny port is 100 km) before going there to do his actual job. Such situation will make the process of obtaining entry permission to the port Yuzhnyy a much more complicated and laborious task than the surveyor’s work itself, let alone the costs of 3 additional trips to the port (no independent surveying company has got an office in the Yuzhnyy port and it’s very well understood as the annual rent and maintenance of such an office will be higher than the surveyors’ earnings for the same period).
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