Norwegian shipowners assure Pinoy seafarers’ safety

OSLO – The head of the Norwegian Shipping Association (NSA) in Oslo assured the families of seafarers from the Philippines that security and safety continues to be the top concern of their organization whose members employ up to 32,000 Filipino seafarers in their global operations.

“We are working on a wide variety of measures to enhance security of our seafarers on our ships (that) encompass everything from intelligence collection and dissemination, to training of crews and preparing them for entering and passing through these (dangerous) waters (so that the crew) can react if they are attacked by pirates,” Sturla Henriksen, CEO of NSA told ABS-CBN Europe.

Henriksen also expressed concern over the “unprecedented scale of attacks” on ships and that the problem of piracy is “now spreading to the areas east of Somalia and the Indian Ocean”.

The commander of the European Union Naval force against piracy, Rear Admiral Peter Hudson, has recently acknowledged that the task of securing the 1 million square miles area of the world’s oceans where the pirates operate is proving to be difficult.

For his part, Henriksen said that the NSA will be asking the Norwegian government to renew its commitment to re-deploying its naval frigate Fridtjof Nansen to the Aden bay to boost the international operations against piracy in the pirate-infested waters around the Horn of Africa. The frigate had been sent by the Norwegian navy to the Gulf since August this year for 6 months. Its deployment is expected to be extended following the rising attacks on maritime ships.

Global piracy statistics from the International Maritime Bureau revealed that in the first nine months of 2009, 114 vessels were boarded, 34 vessels hijacked and 88 vessels fired upon. A total of 661 crewmembers were taken hostage, 12 kidnapped, six killed and eight reported missing.

Pirate attacks on vessels peaked in 2008 where an average of one in 6.4 vessels was hijacked. This has since slowed down to only one in nine vessels this year according to the same report.

Recently, another tanker, the Greek-flagged oil tanker Maran Centaurus, was captured by Somali pirates off the coast of Somalia Sunday. The 300,000 ton tanker has among its crew, 16 Filipino seafarers. This latest attack brought the total number of Filipinos seafarers being held as hostages in Somalia to 70 according to the Philippine labor department.

The European Union Naval force reported that pirates now hold 11 ships and 264 crew members off the coast of Somalia.

Henriksen also expressed concern over the situation of Filipino seafarers who are still being held captive in Somalia and offered “sincere hopes that they will be released without being harmed as soon as possible.”

At present, the European Union Naval force reported that pirates now hold 11 ships and 264 crew members off the coast of Somalia.

The Norwegian Shipping Association (NSA) has around 160 members – shipowners in the tanker and bulk transport sector, short sea sector and offshore activities. Up to 1000 Norwegian ships pass through the Horn of Africa every year and to date no Norwegian vessel had been captured by Somali pirates although there been some attempted pirate attacks on some of their vessels in recent years. –Macel Ingles, ABS-CBN Europe News Bureau