The ICS is opposed to the location of a route which predetermined for the transit in the Channel of Mozambique



The International Chamber of Shipping (ICS), the world-wide organization of the shipowning industry, has announced that, in occasion of the next reunion of the sub-committee for safety of navigation of the International Maritime Organization (IMO) that will hold from the 2 on 6 July next ones to London, it will be opposed to the proposal to establish a long fixed marine route about 1.000 miles for all the ships that journey in the Channel of Mozambique to the aim to safeguard safety of the marine traffic and to avoid collisions and silting ups in the area.

ICS has remembered that currently the ships are free to use the entire width of the Channel, that is in international waters and that in the tightened point more is wide beyond 200 miles, while the proposal has the objective to concentrate the marine traffic on very narrow routes "being potentially increased - it has emphasized the shipowning organization - the risk of collisions".

The proposal is advanced by Comoro, France, Madagascar, Mauritius, Mozambique, Seychelles, South Africa and Tanzania. "ICS - it has explained in charge of the section Marine of the International Chamber of Shipping, John Murray - is a lot worried from this proposal turns to define a new broken advised in international waters, in order to do so as that all the ships follow the same route. This will above all increase the risk of collisions for the hundreds of ships that anytime will follow such indication, because of the current lack of Vessel Traffic Services in the region. The project could also constitute an inopportune precedence for the management of oceanic navigation in other E regions this will demand a careful examination by the IMO".

Moreover Murray has emphasized that no evidence statistics is supplied regarding the number of lefts or recorded dangers to the marine traffic in the Channel of the Mozambique; "this omission - it has specified - is profitable particularly difficult to quantify the waited for benefits that the proposal would offer".

Finding that "piracy is naturally one of the main problems in this area", Murray has observed moreover that "the implications for the safeguard and safety correlated to the introduction of this proposal of route, than consequently concentrate the ships when they enter in a zone to high risk, are not faced by the supporters of the project".