Nippon Maritime Center: Keeping the Malacca Straits Safe
David Tharp
The Nippon Foundation
The Nippon Foundation
Indepth Articles
[Feb. 04, 2010]
Singapore Harbor and The Malacca-Singapore Straits (Photos: David Tharp)
Singapore -- The Straits of Malacca and Singapore (SMS) provide safe navigational passage to 94,000 ships a year thanks to the maintenance efforts by the littoral states of Malaysia, Indonesia, and Singapore.
The financial cost of Straits maintenance for these three countries is high due to the need to provide navigational buoys, beacons, and lighthouses. Repair vessels are also required to monitor and repair this equipment.
The Nippon Foundation took the initiative to donate $2.5 million in 2008 and 2009 to the Aids to Navigation Fund, which was set up in 2008 to deal with Straits maintenance. This donation covers about one-third of the funding needed each year to keep the world’s busiest sea lane environmentally and navigationally problem free.
The Foundation will continue to donate the same amount for the next three years to the Aids to Navigation Fund, but it is hoped that corporate users of the Straits will contribute more to support the smooth navigation of Straits shipping, and protection of the maritime environmental.
The Nippon Foundation’s Chairman Yohei Sasakawa said recently: “The Nippon Foundation encourages users of the Straits to play their role from the viewpoint of corporate social responsibility.” He stressed the foundation’s opinion that all users of the straits should voluntarily provide the funds needed to maintain safety there.
The Nippon Foundation is a long standing contributor to maintenance of the Straits. It supported the establishment of the Nippon Maritime Center (NMC) in Singapore in 2002. NMC represents the collective maritime initiatives of three Japanese organizations: The Nippon Foundation, Malacca Strait Council, and The Japan Association of Marine Safety.
The NMC’s twin objectives are to enhance maritime safety and to protect the marine environment in the South East Asian seas, particularly in the Malacca and Singapore Straits. The organization is staffed with veteran maritime specialists, including Captain Mathew Mathai, who has spent years as a pilot in the Straits.
Capt Mathai said in an interview in Singapore: “We work hand in hand to maintain and develop friendly ties between the Southeast Asian countries’ maritime communities and its counterparts in Japan. We cooperate closely with Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore to keep the Straits of Malacca and Singapore safe and clean.”
NMC is currently cooperating in plans to set up seven new lighthouses along the Straits, and offer help to island states in Micronesia that want to establish a surveillance system in their economic zones to protect marine resources, added Mathai.
However, NMC’s main priority is assisting the littoral states of the Straits to meet the rising costs of maintaining and replacing necessary equipment such as the system of buoys and buoy-tender vessels.
Rather than these costs continuing to be the sole burden of the littoral nations, the NMC is raising awareness among shipping users to encourage them to cooperate in sharing these costs.
Fortunately, there is positive response from organizations like the Middle East Navigation Aids Service, the Japanese Ship Owners’ Association, and the Round Table of International Shipping Associations.
Hopefully, this is leading to more support in the corporate world to take its share of the responsibility for use of the seas.