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Getting together over stowaways
 A 100 per cent increase in the average cost of stowaway incidents in the past ten years has prompted Director Member NYK of Japan, and the Club, to get together to review the problem.
Fifty members of NYK senior regional management, terminal representatives from major Chinese ports including Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Xiamen, Shekou and Shanghai, and representatives from the Club met in conference under the auspices of NYK Line (China) Ltd. The attendees included Tomoo Kitayama, a board member of the NYK Group.
Recent close cooperation between NYK and its terminal operators had certainly proved worthwhile with a marked downturn in the number of stowaway cases, particularly in containerships. NYK wants to raise awareness of stowaway problems among its shore based and terminal operators in China and of the preventive measures available to further reduce the number of incidents.
Speaking at the conference, Thomas Miller Asia executive Peter Lau said the club was involved in around 120 stowaway cases totalling over $2 million in 2007. In the period 1998-2003 they were consistently between 350 and 400. But the average cost per case has risen from under $6,000 in 2000 to around $14,500 in 2007. The impact on individual ship owners was likely to be much greater, given rising deductibles and the non-reporting of small and quickly solved cases.
Peter concluded: "The container trade offers a tempting pipeline for smugglers which can only be tackled through close co-operation between terminals and ship owners. If a security culture is pursued vigorously from the booking desk to the floodlit deck of the ship, potential stowaways and smugglers will never have it easy."
A variety of material on tackling stowaways can be found in the Club website, including a recent press release as well as Loss Prevention bulletins and papers in the Members' Area Encyclopaedia.
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