GMA sets up system to ensure clean marine environment
The Ghana Maritime Authority (GMA) has established the Vessel Traffic Management Information System (VTMIS), an integrated system to enhance continuous electronic surveillance of the entire coast of Ghana.
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The move is in line with the organisation’s mission of ensuring a clean marine environment by protecting Ghana’s maritime domain from vessel and other sources of pollution.
In that regard, the authority has said that it had also a statement signed by the Director-General of the GMA, Rev. Dr Peter Issaka Azuma to commemorate the Africa’s Day of the Seas and Oceans appealed to all players in the maritime industry in Ghana to work to ensure that the highest standards in the maritime world were achieved.
Code of Conduct
The statement said the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 14, spells out the need to ensure a proper code of conduct for world maritime administrations to protect the world’s seas and oceans because of the immeasurable benefits it offered to global development.
By this code, the UN tasked the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) to improve on the already existing measures into a globalised standard to ensure that there was a global conformity to ensure that shipping did not negatively affect the marine environment.
The quest to achieve that goal, the statement said, was what led the IMO to come up with the observance of July 25 as the world’s Seas and Oceans Day.
Maritime strategy
“The years 2015-2025 was declared as the Decade of Africa’s Seas and Oceans. The AU launched a strategic plan called the 2050 Africa Integrated Maritime strategy (2050 AIM Strategy). Aside protecting Africa’s Marine environment, the strategy also seeks to enhance Africa’s Blue Economy through job creation; and to effectively utilise the common maritime and coastal resources such as energy and raw material distribution,” it said.
The statement said the GMA had over the years, stayed faithful to its mission of ensuring a clean marine environment saying it was being regulated by the Maritime Pollution Bill of 2016 under six annexes of prevention of pollution by oil, control of pollution by noxious liquid substances, harmful substances carried by sea in packages, sewage from ships, garbage from ships, and air pollution from ships.
It said the authority was also collaborating with the Ghana Navy to protect the shipping routes and ships as well as the country’s blue resources towards ensuring a clean maritime domain for future generations.