OFFICIALS OF THE "VANCOUVER" COMPLAIN

Captain of the "Vancouver", Geomelos Georgios

"I never saw an operation as vile in any Brazilian port or around the world. The work, besides being slow, is being done by disorganised personnel who succeed in unbalancing my boat. I had to use all my ballast to avoid damage," said the Captain of the Maltese-flagged "Vancouver", Geomelos Georgios, 53, speaking yesterday, 16 April, and evaluating the first 24 hours of operation on the quay of the Paulo Steel Company (Cosipa) with personnel from its own firm. The "Vancouver" was occupied by workers from the Port of Santos from the 2nd to the 15th of April. "If the problems persist, it will paralyse operations tomorrow (17 April)," he affirmed.

The "Vancouver" carried 46,800 tonnes of coal to Santos, loaded in the South African port of Richards Bay. It docked at 13:00 hours on 1st April, at Cosipa’s Pier 5, the most modern of the firm’s berths. His ship was occupied by workers on the night of that same day. Evacuated by the Federal Police on the morning of 15 April, it began to discharge in the morning, with operations controlled by Cosipa personnel.

"We note that the personnel on board do not know the work and that they insist on working in the forward holds, the lightest, and removing cargo from the middle of the hold. Our stern holds are the heaviest and the ship began to tilt up dangerously. We had to compensate with ballast, but we exhausted all our capacity today (16 April). Tomorrow I will not allow the ship to operate if the problems are not corrected," the Captain explained.

Chief Officer, Spiros Miliotis

"We try to discuss things with the personnel who are working, but they don’t have a foreman to liaise between the workers on the quay and on board, and the workers there don’t understand a word of English, don’t even understand maritime terms. They are not stevedores, who are trained workers, specialised, and do not allow the ship to list. Trained people know that, however rigid a freighter appears, in reality it is flexible, it can split down the middle," adds the Chief Officer of the "Vancouver", Spiros Miliotis, 52.

Over 24 hours the ship discharged 14,350 tonnes, while with a professional operation, according to his account and based on other voyages to the same terminal, this quantity would be shifted in about 10 hours.

"We are communicating with our agency, in Fertimport, in Santos, over the problems, and they entered into contact with Cosipa, who promised to resolve things, but did nothing. I also spoke to the shipowner, in Target Marine, Athens, over what is happening," Georgio stated.

"It does not pay to engage untrained personnel and save pennies, while an operational team, precisely through the lack of specialisation, would do everything more carefully. The ships currently still require port workers to discharge and load, people with technical knowledge of the operations. Those men who they put there to replace the stevedores lead to running risks of safety because at least they [the stevedores] know how to move in the hold," concluded the Chief Officer Miliotis.