Marine Dept urged to improve navigation safety
BATU PAHAT: The Marine Department has been urged to improve its control system at sea and the navigation safety system to prevent any accident, especially in national waters.
Deputy Transport Minister Datuk Ab Aziz Kaprawi said this was necessary to ensure that tourist boat accidents, such as the one in Sabah recently, do not happen again.
“We want that when a boat capsizes and goes missing like in Sabah, we can quickly detect it.
“We want the Marine Department to improve the system to ensure better safety at sea,” he told reporters here yesterday.
Earlier, he launched the Sri Gading People's Fiesta held in conjunction with the Transport Ministry's ‘Jalinan Mesra' Programme at the Dataran Kompleks Niaga Parit Raja, near here.
The department is currently using the “vessel traffic services “control system to monitor ships which pass through busy routes like the Melaka Straits.
“At the Melaka Straits, we monitor 80,000 shipping trips each year, a big number,” said Ab Aziz.
He said the system, which uses radar technology, was used to monitor ships passing through the Straits of Melaka to ensure they follow regulations and do not cause accidents.
He added that to cope with the increasing number of ships coming from all over the world, a more efficient control system was needed.
“We also want each port to have the ability to handle big ships, in line with the government's objective of making Malaysia a logistics hub in the Asean region,” said Ab Aziz.
Malaysia, he said, was at a strategic location of trade between the east (China, Japan and South Korea) and the west, with ships having to pass through the Straits of Melaka. — Bernama