Captains decry state of ports
Passenger and merchant marine captains are raising the alarm about inadequate infrastructure in the country’s ports, which, in several cases, makes them dangerous.
“Port Report 2024,” issued by the Panhellenic Association of Merchant Marine Captains – which also represents passenger shipping officers – offers a litany of problems and deficiencies affecting Greek ports: ports servicing thousands of cars and trucks without adequate parking facilities; ports that, with years of silt accumulation, have seen their depths reduced, making approach a dangerous precision exercise with little room for error; crumbling piers; lighthouses and other signaling devices in urgent need of replacement; unregulated anchoring of large cruise ships offshore that make other ships’ approach akin to threading the needle; low-quality waiting spaces for passengers; almost nonexistent sunshields; impact mitigation points that are crumbling in docking places, with rusty steel beams jutting out where the cement has long fallen off.
Some of the problems highlighted in the annual report appear ridiculously simple to fix, such as changing the bulbs in lighthouses. But the municipalities and port authorities entrusted with the upkeep often lack the funds to perform these simple tasks, never mind undertaking more serious maintenance projects, such as port dredging, or infrastructure works, such as building new piers, that require competitive bidding.
Infrastructure maintenance and improvement has become even more critical with tourism booming. But in many ports, passengers’ experience has become an exercise in hardship, the captains warn.
It is not the first time the ship captains have expressed their frustrations, in writing. The first investment program of its kind, concerning projects in more than 50 ports, has been approved and budgeted at €324 million, funds that the Ministry of Maritime Affairs and Island Policy has gotten mostly from the European Union’s structural funds. It remains to be seen whether this amount, significant as it is, will be enough to make up for decades of neglect, exacerbated by the financial crisis during the 2010s. And, when the projects get going, it will take years to design and complete them.
