EDITORIAL - Maritime safety is an awesome responsibility

Because the Philippines is an archipelago, maritime transport is essentially the main mode of moving people and cargo throughout the islands. The Maritime Industry Authority, in partnership with the Philippine Coast Guard, plays a very important and crucial role in ensuring that maritime transport throughout the islands is safe, efficient, and economically viable.

That the Philippines lies smack in the middle of the Western Pacific typhoon corridor serves to make this tremendous responsibility of the Marina, and the Coast Guard, even greater. Getting ships safely, efficiently, and on time to their destinations is a shared responsibility between ship owners and these two government agencies. So when ship owners slip up, these government agencies must be able to come in quick and hard.

But this does not seem to be the case. Numerous incidents of ships not arriving on time or not arriving at all because they never managed to leave have been reported, some as recent as just weeks ago. The causes of these incidents are well documented. In most, engine failure had been the culprit, a terrifying thought if in the middle of a storm. Yet despite repeated engine failures, a sure sign of unseaworthiness, unseaworthy vessels continue to sail with government approval.

It is not clear whether the government agencies tasked with the awesome responsibility to ensure safe, efficient and economically viable sea travel are being negligent because that is something higher authorities need to determine officially. But from the level of the general public, that is clearly taking great risks with lives of people. And that is unacceptable.

Complacency has no place in the maritime industry. Government regulators cannot remain impervious to a problem bugging the maritime industry. Many ships in the industry are old, their engines unreliable. Managing to operate as such surreptitiously is understandable only if this were a cat-and-mouse game. But to operate under the very noses of government regulators, especially with their explicit okay, is as unpardonable as it is unconscionable.

It is like trusting everything to luck. But luck is not a life jacket in sea travel. The country does not need another costly maritime incident just to prod government into taking action. Government has to make sure nothing happens. For of what use is its presence in a dire aftermath. The Marina and the Coast Guard are vested with great authority to weed out unseaworthy vessels. To carry out such awesome responsibility, they must exercise it, not carry it as a badge on their vests.