194 passenger ships in Zhoushan underwent “physical examination” conducted by maritime authorities ahead of Spring Festival travel rush

Spring Festival is coming, and on the morning of January 15, law enforcement officers of Zhoushan Maritime Safety Administration Of People’s Republic of CHINA came to Shenjiamen Pier Head Passenger Terminal, successively carrying out security check of passenger ships including”Shenlv 1” and “Liuheng 2”. They conducted a detailed inspection on the technical condition of key equipment on ships such as life saving, fire fighting and emergency as well as crew competency and the executive condition of “5 institutions “ of water passenger transportation.

It is reported that the 2021 Spring Festival travel rush will start on January 28. In order to ensure seaworthiness of ships and eligibility of the crew during the 2021 Spring Festival travel rush, Zhoushan Maritime Safety Administration Of People’s Republic of CHINA deployed as early as possible, carrying out a 45-day pre-holiday safety inspection to 22 passenger enterprises and all 194 passenger ferries in the area in order to ensure that all passenger ships are put into operation without carrying viruses.

Principles of the ship supervision department of Zhoushan Maritime Safety Administration Of People’s Republic of CHINA introduced that the administration firmly believed that "hidden trouble is no small matter". It started passenger ferry ship safety inspection work before the Spring Festival travel rush on December 15, 2020. The focuses of this time’s passenger ship safety inspection include: passenger ship "five institutions" and the executive condition of "5+X" self-discipline institutions, implementation of safety measures and emergency drills in cold wave, high wind and poor visibility in winter, outcomes of relevant regulations on navigation watch, cabin patrol and the use of mobile phones by pilots during the voyage; key equipment operation, crew responsibilities and training, etc.

During the inspection, Zhoushan Maritime Safety Administration Of People’s Republic of CHINA referred to various problems found in the process of supervision and inspection and visited passenger transportation enterprises, focusing on the training of company systems and crew safety skills. Also, spot check was carried out on the implementation of bridge shift monitoring system of related companies and the safe production responsibility system in order to urge enterprises to improve risk control ability.

Passenger ship safety inspection before the festival is divided into preliminary inspection and re-examination. The preliminary inspection of the passenger ships will be completed before January 18, while the re-examination, online cross-assessment and post-inspection assessment of the real ship will be completed before January 28. Up to January 15, maritime law enforcement personnel has checked 156 passenger ships during the preliminary investigation. Defective projects that have been spotted mainly include: part of the ship fire fighting equipment is aging, life-saving equipment are not in place or cannot be used immediately, lifebuoy isn’t marked with names of vessels and ports of registry, lifesaving float line can’t meet the requirements of laws and regulations, lack of initiative and auxiliary propulsion system maintenance, electronic chart system version is not updated in time, poor practice ability of the crew, etc.

Subsequently, the maritime department will supervise and guide the passenger transport enterprises and the passenger ships to carry on rectifications to the discovered defect projects and organize the implementation of the security check review work, ensuring that all the defect projects are rectified in place.