Opinion | Hong Kong's maritime management all at sea
Philip Bowring says the handling of two deadly maritime collisions four years apart may differ in their details, but both underline a disturbing confusion of where responsibilities fall
In spite of the importance for Hong Kong of its port and shipping centre roles, all is not well in the jurisdiction of maritime affairs. The attitude of the Marine Department to the Lamma IV disaster is extremely disturbing and cries out for independent investigation, not the light touch expected from fellow bureaucrats of the Transport and Housing Bureau.
But the department was quite innocent in the gross miscarriage of justice in another maritime tragedy, the 2008 sinking of the Neftegaz-67 in which 18 sailors died. Judges took it upon themselves to know more about navigation in Hong Kong waters than the responsible authority, the Marine Department, and sent a Ukrainian captain to jail on grounds that defy logic and fair play.
In the case of the Lamma IV, in which 39 people died, the head of the Marine Department has finally come out with a lame apology. This was more than six months after the tragedy and weeks after an indictment of the department by the independent Commission of Inquiry.
Anyone reading that report would conclude that criminal charges should have been brought against officials from the department and the company. It concluded that some deaths were directly due to the structural failings of the Lamma IV, its hull, its weight distribution and its seat fittings, several of which were not according to specification, and the lack of children's life vests. In other words, the deaths were not simply due to navigational errors but also to the inadequacies of the vessels, due to some combination of negligence, incompetence and possibly collusion.
It is now probably too late to bring any new charges. The damning conclusions relating to the department and company were not redacted from the published report. In other words, there appears to have been a silent conspiracy to pin the blame on the vessel captains who have been charged with manslaughter. So, the overworked captains with heavy responsibilities, but mostly paid less than junior government clerks, are singled out while officials are likely to escape with reprimands. It appears that the law for the public at large does not apply to the priestly caste of civil servants.
Similar accusations of furthering injustice could be applied to the government in the case of the March 2008 sinking of the supply vessel Neftegaz-67. Eighteen Ukrainian crew died when their vessel collided with a large bulk carrier, the Yao Hai, off Lantau and sank. Earlier this year, the captain of the Neftegaz-67, Yuriy Kulemesin from Ukraine, lost his case in the Court of Final Appeal against conviction for responsibility for the accident and is now serving time in prison. The decision - and the quashing of the conviction of the Hong Kong pilot of the mainland-owned Yao Hai - caused astonishment in international maritime circles.