Awudu Enusah, Principal Maritime Administrative Officer at the Ghana Maritime Authority (GMA), has disclosed that Ghana is one of the seafarer-friendly ports.
Enusah stated that Ghana has even been recognised as a seafarer port by some international bodies.
He said this during a media forum by the Ghana Ports and Harbours Authority (GPHA) on the topic “Building A Safer Sea Experience Through Harassment-Free Ships”.
“When seafarers are in distress at sea and they happen to be within the Gulf of Guinea area, some of the destinations that they want to get to are Ghana because they know that we are very receptive,” he said.
He added that if a port safe controller boarded a vessel berthing at Ghana ports, his interest was to ensure that the seafarer was well and comfortable on the vessel.
He added that the mandate under the Ghana Maritime Authority Regulation LI 2226 was that “we are supposed to ensure that seafarers calling at Ghana’s port are comfortable; it is also expected that everybody have a role to play.”
He urged seafarers to be abreast of regulations and laws governing their work, indicating that the International Labour Organisation (ILO) ensured that anything relating to the welfare of workers was handled as a public document; therefore, such documents could be downloaded from the internet and studied.
Touching on harassment and bullying of seafarers, he stated that some of these abuses were cultural, stating, for instance, that “As I am communicating with you, some of my gestures may be insulting in your culture, but I am not aware, and that’s why they decided that let’s catalogue the universal ones, the ones that, irrespective of the culture, such conduct is wrong.”
Enusah added that the catalogue, which commenced as a guideline, had become part of the Maritime Labour Convention, adding that there was a lot of attention on the issue of harassment and bullying in the industry.
He indicated that the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) and the ILO’s joint tripartite working group wanted it to be part of the laws so that it must be enforced by the maritime administration.
According to him, the Maritime Labour Convention Regulation 4.3 deals with the protection of the seafarer on board ships and also refers to the document prepared by the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF) and the International Chamber of Shipping (ICS) as harassment, constituting harassment by the Maritime Labour Convention.
He added that it was important to sensitise the seafarer to know what was meant by harassment and bullying and what conduct constituted that to be able to guard themselves.
“First of all, you don’t do it to others, and if it should happen to you, you know what to do. The interesting thing is that when it comes to issues of harassment and bullying, both the perpetrators and victims are seafarers themselves, so they need to be sensitised to such conduct because you are working on the vessel and the person who is subjecting you to the harassment and bullying is a seafarer and the victim too.
“Some of them don’t even know that what they are engaged in is bullying or harassment,” he added.
