AMSA officers attended the 16th Port State Control Committee meeting of the Indian Ocean Memorandum of Understanding (IOMOU) hosted by France in the city of Saint Denis on Reunion Island. The meeting, held from 23-26 September, resulted in a number of significant outcomes aimed to facilitate improvements in the implementation of port State control (PSC) in the Indian Ocean region.
Reunion Island is a department of France and is essentially a part of Europe in the Indian Ocean. As a port State control regime is in place on Reunion Island, France decided to become an observer in the IOMOU in 2009. Full membership was achieved in 2010. France expressed a desire to play an important role in the IOMOU, hence the hosting of the meeting and the election of France as the next Chairman of the IOMOU until 2015.
Outcomes from the meeting included:
- the introduction of the revised PSC manual. Initial work was undertaken by AMSA but it was finalised by working groups established during this meeting (and the previous meeting)
- the introduction of a draft Member State Audit Checklist to assist members to prepare of IMO Audits
- the introduction of changes, and enhancements, to the Indian Ocean Computer Information System (IOCIS) to harmonise it with AMSA and Tokyo MOU (TMOU) systems and improve its functionality. The work supporting this outcome was undertaken by the Business Services section in AMSA's Ship Safety Division. Included in this work flow was the commencement of the establishment of a web-based data interchange for IOCIS to allow it to share information with AMSA, TMOU and other users
- a meeting of the steering committee to examine future PSC expert missions to be undertaken under the PSC programme being implemented by AMSA under the Public Sector Linkages Programme (PSLP) funded by AusAID. This programme has already seen the delivery of Maritime English language Training for PSC Officers held in the Union of Comoros.