The Marshall Islands ship registry was named recently by the US Coast Guard as one of 19 flag administrations globally that meet the agency’s ship safety requirements. This is the 14th consecutive year that the Marshall Islands has been included in the US Coast Guard’s Quality Shipping for 21st Century Program, known as “Qualship 21.”
The Coast Guard report shows that during 2017, 1,261 safety exams were conducted on RMI-flagged vessels. There were six RMI-flagged vessels detained for safety violations during the year, the report said. The 2015-2017 detention rate for RMI-flagged vessels was less than one percent of the vessels inspected (.71 percent). This was better than the other two big ship registries of Panama and Liberia, which had detention rates of 1.9 percent and 1.4 percent, respectively, the Coast Guard report showed.
The Qualship 21 recognition is for the period July 1, 2018 to June 30, 2019. In addition, Marshall Islands-flagged ships account for nearly 30 percent of vessels the US Coast Guard has rated as meeting stringent environmental standards. Within its Qualship 21 vessel safety program, the US Coast Guard has set up a new “E-Zero” designation for vessels. The new program focuses on environmental stewardship and compliance with international environmental conventions.
As of earlier this month, 15 of the 53 vessels that have made the Coast Guard’s E-Zero list are RMI-flagged, or 28 percent of the total.
Read more about this in the August 31, 2018 edition of the Marshall Islands Journal.