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RCOC gets state-of-the-art Maritime Awareness System |03 December 2019

RCOC gets state-of-the-art Maritime Awareness System

Ambassador Degert addressing the gathering during the site visit (Photos: Thomas Meriton)

Shipping vessels operating in the Eastern Southern Africa and Indian Ocean (ESA-IO) region will be closely monitored than ever before now that the Regional Centre for Operations Coordination (RCOC) has been equipped with a Maritime Awareness System (MAS), capable of detecting activities at sea.

The state-of-the-art platform, based at the RCOC headquarters on Bois De Rose Avenue, will allow maritime authorities, coastguard, law enforcement agencies from the seven member states of the Western Indian Ocean – Mauritius, Madagascar, Comoros, France Reunion, Kenya, Djibouti and Seychelles – to perform real-time or historical surveillance on an area or fleet or vessel of interest and raise alerts upon events or specific behaviour such as their positions, movements and also their history including pollution at sea.

The Maritime Awareness System, a key tool for promoting maritime security in the Indian Ocean region, was funded by the European Union at a cost of €2.5 million under the programme to promote Regional Maritime Security (MASE).

In the margins of the 7th EU-Seychelles Political Dialogue, a delegation led by the ambassador of the European Union to the Republic of Seychelles, Vincent Degert, and comprising ambassadors and representatives from 11 EU member States, joined representatives of EU NAVFOR Somalia Operation Atalanta on a site visit of the RCOC to attend a demonstration of the new surveillance system in the presence of the director of the centre, Colonel Georges Adeline, and the Rear Admiral of EU NAVFOR Somalia Operation Atalanta, Giovanni Piegaja.

Colonel Adeline, who gave an overview of the RCOC and its functions, thanked the EU for the donation and for supporting the centre and noted that without partnership and collaboration, it is practically impossible for a country to handle maritime security on its own.

He further said that the new system will be fully operational by the end of December 2019.

On explaining on the system, the deputy director of RCOC, Mauritian Police Superintendent Outam Guness said: “It allows us, by sitting on the screen, to see the different types of ship movements in the region and so through a small dot on the screen we can see where a vessel is going, where it has come from and also we get a history of that vessel on whether it had stopped in our economic zone or on a continuous movement.

“And this is very important especially with the type of threats that we have in the region especially drug trafficking, illegal fishing and so from a screen we can monitor what they are doing”.

He said that in the event of a suspect activity, the RCOC upon receiving data from the main server of Regional Maritime Information Infusion Centre (RMIFC) in Madagascar, coordinates with the member states which have various assets like ships and aircraft among others which are deployed towards the target area or vessel, something which was very difficult to do in the past.

Ambassador Degert said that they had wanted to see whether the centre was fully equipped to start moving to the buildup stage for the real operational phase and that they were very happy to have witnessed that everything was in place ready for the active start of the operation.

As for the interest of EU in tackling maritime insecurity in the region, Ambassador Degert said that if there is instability and insecurity in the region everybody will be affected as there won’t be any trade, tourism or other economic activities and there is a need to boost capacity to manage the huge ocean or else its economic viability would be threatened. He noted that the EU has heavily invested €42 million in maritime security projects amid the threats which are still visible.

Ambassador Degert thanked the Seychelles government for showing a high level of commitment in safeguarding the region’s maritime zone and highlighted the important role played by the Indian Ocean Commission (IOC) under the MASE programme for the establishment of the RCOC in Seychelles. He reiterated EU’s continued partnership in maritime security in the region.

The RCOC’s main mission is to plan and coordinate maritime security operations. It was inaugurated in July 2017.

Patrick Joubert

 

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