Sea travel compromising passenger safety
Calls are growing for a change in the legal framework to address the increased safety risks for passengers due to aging ports, the insufficient number of port authority personnel and the pressure on ships to keep up with demanding schedules.
Tellingly, the port infrastructure was built more than 50 years ago to serve ships half the size of today’s vessels.
Back in the day ships carried a few hundred passengers and few cars, which is in stark contrast to the growing flows of thousands of Greeks and foreign passengers.
Furthermore, the land areas of the ports, which must operate as passenger parking and waiting spaces, are frequently insufficient, if not nonexistent, creating a burden on the island’s road network and urban fabric.
To make matters worse, there is an insufficient number of port officials, who are responsible for security control and enforcing order when passengers are embarking and disembarking, as a large number of them have moved to the border to deal among other things with illegal migration flows.
Simply put, the overworked few people are called upon to control an ever-increasing volume of passengers and vehicles with inadequate infrastructure and under time pressure.
At the same time, there is reportedly a growing number of high-speed vessels of usually smaller companies operating for only a few months in the summer, with all that this entails – such as familiarizing their staff and crews with the International Safety Management (ISM) Code.
According to shipping circles, the Ship Inspection Directorate at the Shipping Ministry and the classification societies responsible for ship certification are primarily concentrating on large corporations that have distinct corporate structures and have implemented specific international safety protocols.
Many smaller and medium-sized companies, some of which are also operating under foreign flags, are said to be receiving less attention.
