AN AHP MODEL FOR THE CHOICE OF SHIP FLAG: A CASE STUDY OF TAIWANESE SHIPOWNERS

The choice of an appropriate ship flag for the existing fleet or new-building ships is one of important issues of shipowners. The main purpose of this paper is to construct an Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) model for the choice of ship flag. An application of the proposed AHP model to the case study on the ship flag choice of Taiwanese shipowners is shown in this article. The results show that the most important influential factors on the ship flag choice of Taiwanese shipowners are in order of the importance as follows: (a) crew cost, (b) incentive, (c) fiscal reason, (d) dual class expense, (e) tax-related expense, (f) PSC inspection, (g) freedom to employ foreign crew, (h) priority to transport, (i) ship registry process, (j) market consideration, (k) level of bureaucracy, and (l) law restrictions. The top four nations for Flag of Convenience (FOC) registry are in order of shipowner’s preferences as follows: (a) Panama, (b) Liberia, (c) Hong Kong, and (d) Singapore. The above findings can be a reference for the maritime departments of Taiwanese government transportation to help the maritime departments offer response strategies and policies for future development of national ship registration system.

‘The company will fire you because you are too expensive’: a photo-ethnography of health care rights among Filipino migrant seafarers

With fatal injuries six times the rate of all US occupations, people who live and work at sea are part of one of the most dangerous occupations. Few ships have health care workers aboard despite many seafarers being at sea for months. While seafarers are guaranteed a right to health care through maritime labor laws and conventions, it is unclear whether or how they access these rights. Therefore, photo-ethnography was used to examine what health care access means for seafarers through the lens of structural violence. The study site was the vessel the seafarers worked and lived on, which docked in the Gulf of Mexico once-a-week, flies a flag of convenience, and travels in international waters. The photo-ethnography was implemented over a one-year period and included male Filipino seafarers who worked 9-month contracts at sea. The historical, structural, and political-economic production of injury, illness, and death were questioned to understand why migrant seafarers do not have de facto access to their de jure health rights. In this way, health prevention was analyzed through the discourse of power distribution instead of risk and disease. Results from the project reveal that seafarers routinely underreport adverse work and health conditions for fear of losing future work contracts. Adverse work experiences included dangerous vessels and routes as well as being encouraged to work with little sleep or through storms. Adverse health issues included severe to moderate injury and illness, which they concealed from management. Ultimately, it was revealed that political-economic systems are internalized and embodied among migrant workers who are employed under short-term contracts, leading to decreased healthcare-seeking behaviors and increased health disparities.

What Are These Countries Doing Here? Analyzing Transparency in the Current Flag of Convenience Regime and Their Impact on Shipping in the Arctic

As countries such as the Russian Federation begin the exploration and development of alternative sea routes in the Arctic due to climate change, the private shipping industry has also begun to focus on the region. However, even with this new focus, old problems continue to fester. One such problem is Flags of Convenience, which are those countries that will flag vessels cheaply and provide little to no oversight. This paper is an exploration of the transparency and good governance of selected Flag of Convenience countries through various methods as compared to a model, highly transparent Arctic model. By attempting to flag a vessel familiar to the authors, the authors uncovered a lack of transparency in these Flag of Convenience countries, show statistical evidence of the Flag of Convenience problem already being an issue in the Arctic, and provide some policy proposals in order to help to rectify a small but growing issue of Arctic shipping.

Dual Nationality of the Ships and its Legal Impact

The international conventions for high seas had provided that each ship must have one flag only and must not change its flag during the voyage or for any reason. However, in the last years many ships have infringed this rule and had registered with other states that had allowed any foreign ships to register in their ports. These states are an open registry states, which are known as 'Flag of Convenience' states. This change of the flag during the voyage, which caused a lot of problems, was for a political and economic reasons either to make their own profit or to avoid their flag state fees. Notably, such phenomenon is considered as a maritime fraud, which will impact the maritime world and disseminate chaos on the high seas. For these reasons, this paper will highlight the duplication of the nationality for the ships issue and analyse the effects of this negative behaviour.

ASIAN MARITIME TRANSPORT IN ASIA: A BRIEF STATISTICAL ESSAY

The article describes the state of the Asian merchant marine fleet as of 2018. The main trends of international Maritime trade are described, the composition of the fleet by types of vessels is characterized, and the main directions of trade by groups of goods transported by different types of vessels are shown. The transition of leadership in tonnage from tankers to bulk carriers is revealed, due to the reduction of the role of oil in sea transportation and the formation of flows of raw materials and coal for the ferrous metallurgy to China. The largest container ports in the world are shown, among which East Asian ports predominate. Two leading flag of convenience countries in Asia have been identified – Hong Kong and Singapore. In the global shipbuilding industry, three East Asian countries – China, Japan, and the Republic of Korea – account for 90 % of ship production.