The Maritime Safety Authority of Fiji (MSAF) does not have the legal authority to penalise a vessel that has been found transporting drugs.
MSAF chief executive officer (CEO) Joeli Cawaki said the assumption had always been that MSAF had the authority but there’s no legal framework that would allow them to do this.
He said they had drafted a “long list” of proposals for the review and amendment of some of its legislations, and a part of it was the proposal to allow MSAF to penalise vessel owners.
“We’re putting together the paper that will go to Cabinet to approve the review of this legislation. We’re working closely with the Ministry of Transport. We have a time-line and hopefully by August this paper should go to Cabinet,” Mr Cawaki told The Fiji Times.
“Drugs is a new issue at the moment, and we cannot penalise a vessel if it’s carrying drugs. There may be other Acts that can penalise the vessel but for MSAF, there’s nothing being said about a vessel that’s registered in Fiji and carrying drugs.
“What we want to do is, if that vessel is registered in Fiji and it’s carrying drugs, there should be some kind of penalty and it’s either we deregister the vessel or we deregister the crew. That’s not happening at the moment and that is why we need to do to change that.”
“We’re looking at amending all these legislations so that it is current with what is the practice at the moment. We have a long list of what we are going to do to change, but at the moment, some of the current practice that is happening, is not in the Act.
“As I said we’ve got on a long list of proposals.”
