Seychelles boosts its maritime safety measures |18 February 2016

Seychelles is tightening its maritime safety measures through a two-day workshop.

The ‘table top exercise’, taking place at the Seychelles Coast Guard (SCG) base on Ile Perseverance, has been organised by the government of Seychelles through the Seychelles Maritime Safety Administration (SMSA), in coordination with the SCG and in collaboration with the International Maritime Organisation (IMO).

The workshop is being attended by over 25 delegates representing shipping agencies and port security bodies and the SCG.

The workshop’s facilitator is Tracey Peverett, the head of the IMO team.

During the workshop, delegates are expected to share views and improve their knowledge on best security practices, as part of an exercise to keep abreast of changes in the field of maritime security.

The director general of the SMSA, Captain Joachim Valmont said  such workshop will improve our safety measures to protect our ocean.

“A very large community of Seychellois depend directly or indirectly on the fisheries and tourism sector for their livelihood.  Seychelles among other pirate-affected countries has been through tough times during the peak of piracy, especially when we were faced with incidents of Seychellois fishermen being taken hostage by pirates and large decline of tourism and other related activities,” he said.

He added that thanks to the IMO, piracy has reduced significantly.

“Though piracy has considerably reduced by the untethered efforts of IMO, IMO is continuing its effort to sensitise the relevance of enhancing multi-agency converged efforts to build capabilities to improve maritime security, safety and environmental response,” he added.

He pointed out that the ‘table top exercise’ is to stimulate discussion and to demonstrate the need for cooperation among governmental departments and agencies, to work in perfect synergy to respond to threats such as piracy, drug trafficking, maritime terrorism, weapons smuggling, human trafficking, within our waters and beyond.

Ms Peverett stated that the ‘table top exercise’ is to ease discussion among other partners and agencies with an interest in maritime security.

“The ‘table top exercises’ present a range of evolving scenarios to determine respective roles, responsibilities, processes and procedures, and how these may develop, both with respect to routine business, and during an incident. The scenarios vary in complexity and the aim is to enable appropriate senior officials to develop its collective decision-making abilities,” she said.

She added that at the end of such exercise, both IMO and Seychelles would have a reasonable accurate picture of where IMO could potentially offer technical assistance to enhance the coastguard function capabilities, and maritime security.

As part of a phased approach focusing on capacity at the national level, the ‘table top exercises’ have given IMO a valuable opportunity to help member States in West and Central Africa to identify gaps and inconsistencies in their prevailing maritime strategies.

IMO has conducted table top exercises in Ghana, Liberia, the Gambia, Sierra Leone, Senegal and many more, among which Seychelles.