Belgium will recognise valid certificates issued by other States parties to Belgian ships before the entry into force date in Belgium and will not require new Belgian certificates before their expiration (Belgium has an explicit agreement on this with Luxembourg who issued the bulk of the certificates for Belgian ships).
Hold preparation is probably the most vital part of bulk carrier operations; if it is not undertaken properly, it can result in substantial cargo claims, delays, additional cleaning, survey costs and expensive off-hire disputes.
In this lessons learnt video the crew were instructed to clean the vessel’s cargo holds in preparation for the next cargo, during the procedure a seaman on top of the staging fell down suffering serious injuries.
