MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency
Red Ensign Conference in Falklands next month.
The Red Ensign Conference, an annual event, which brings together in a series of meetings those British Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies, which have shipping registers and the UK Maritime and Coast Guard Agency, will be held for the first time in the Falkland Islands next month.
As Falkland Islands Government Marine Officer, Jon Clark, explained to Mercopress, the UK Maritime and Coast Guard Agency (MCA) is the regulatory body for shipping matters in the UK and in the British Overseas territories, which form the Red Ensign Group. MCA also represents Red Ensign Group members' interests in the international forums like SOLAS, which govern all shipping globally, giving them, he argues, a stronger voice than they would otherwise have as individual small countries.
Members of the group are: Bermuda, Isle of Man, Cayman Islands and Gibraltar, which maintain what, are described by MCA as Category 1 Registers, which are unlimited as to the size and tonnage of the ships registered and eight countries which maintain Category 2 Registers, limited to smaller ships under 150 GMT. These latter include Jersey, Guernsey, Anguilla, Turks and Caicos Islands, Monserrat, the British Virgin Islands, South Georgia and the Falkland Islands.
While the MCA attempts as far as possible to impose common standards on the ships of Red Ensign Group countries, there is also room for some slight differences to allow for local conditions and, in some cases, such as that of the ships of the British Antarctic Survey, which are registered in Stanley, for historical tradition.
The annual conference offers the opportunity for the delegates of the twelve member countries to meet separately and in plenary sessions with the MCA, which will be sending six delegates, including their Chief Executive to the conference, to be held in the Stanley offices of Argos Ltd.
Along with the MCA delegates and the delegates from member countries, the Conference will also attract delegates from the British Foreign Office and the Department of Constitutional Affairs, which has responsibility for the Crown Dependencies. There will also be a representative from the British Government's Department of Transport Shipping Policy Branch.
In all there will be some twenty-six delegates and three spouses attending the conference which begins on Monday, 14th February, though the majority will arrive on the LAN Chile flight on Saturday 12th and depart the following Saturday. Mr. Clark said that it was hoped that all would have the opportunity to see something of the Falklands outside the conference room.
Delegates will be paying for their own external flights and accommodation while in the Islands, though the Falkland Islands Government will be paying an estimated £21,000 to wards the cost of entertainment, including local travel. Mr. Clark estimates that most of this money, which is derived from departmental savings within the Fisheries Department, will return to the local economy.
Having attended the annual conferences of the Red Ensign Group since 1999, Jon Clark is confident that they provide useful and necessary opportunities for the participants to keep abreast of developments in a rapidly changing maritime world.
John Fowler (MP) Stanley
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