WESTERN BUREAU — Prime Minister P J Patterson said Wednesday that Jamaica was well on its way to meeting the July 2004 deadline for compliance with the International Ship and Port Facility Security (ISPS) Code, that seeks to enhance port security.

The rush to comply with the ISPS follows the September 11 attack on the United States, which implemented a slew of new measures geared at securing its ports of entry.

“As a contracting party to the ISPS Code, Jamaica is unreservedly committed to carry out the specifics for which the code has provided, both in its mandatory form and its recommendatory section,” Patterson said.

“We have begun to address these in earnest and we fully intend and are well underway to meeting the deadline of July 2004 for full compliance,” he added.

The prime minister was speaking at the opening of the three-day ISPS implementation workshop of the International Maritime Organization (IMO) at the Grand Lido Hotel in Negril on Wednesday.

The ISPS Code was developed following the September 11 attacks on the US, when in November of that year, the 22nd session of the IMO Assembly met and unanimously agreed to implement a range of new security measures for ships and port facilities and to enhance existing ones.

“We are fully seized of the urgent need to radically overhaul our maritime infrastructure and systems to deal definitively and expeditiously with the post-September 11 vulnerability and potential security problems that can confront the maritime arena, affecting ports and ships,” Patterson remarked.

The prime minister added that the strides made by Jamaica to date include:

* an in-depth review of the existing security arrangements at the island’s ports;

* the commencement of policy formation, legislative, administrative and training arrangements; and

* the recognition by the island’s Maritime Authority of the need to fulfil its responsibilities to protect persons on board, cargo, cargo transport units, stores or the ship itself from a security incident.

At the same time, Patterson said he had instructed transport minister, Robert Pickersgill, to provide the Cabinet with the general status of vessels registered under the island’s flag, “well before” the implementation of the ISPS code next year.

In addition, he said the Port Authority had hammered out a framework for a revised Port facility Security Plan to protect the island’s ports.

The components of that plan, he said, include:

* a closed circuit TV system for round the clock surveillance;

* an access control system to electronically control and regulate access to the island’s ports; and

* the procurement of two boats for patrol by the Jamaica Defence Force Coast Guard and x-ray machines for the inspection of cargo and containers.

The benefits of Jamaica’s compliance with the code, Patterson said, extends beyond having top-of-the-line security facilities to developing the cruise/maritime industry to maintain competitiveness and meeting the demands of a growing industry that is among the island’s largest foreign exchange earners.

According to Patterson, the Kingston port, for example, has achieved an annual growth of 17 per cent in container traffic over the years, putting the island in control of some 12 per cent of the Caribbean market.

He said, too, that cruise ship calls for the first four months of this year were the highest since 1999, moving from 320, 308 in that year to 472, 052 this year.

“We regard the maritime industry as being of critical importance to our country. We have to import many of the basic necessities of life and so we have to earn our foreign exchange to be able to do so,” he said.

“The maritime industry we regard as no less critical to the other major export sectors, which include agriculture, tourism, bauxite and alumina. And in the National Industrial Policy, which we promulgated a few years ago, we identified the maritime sector as one of the five pillars for economic growth,” added the prime minister.

Conference participants were engaged in discussion with industry experts on the provisions of the ISPS Code on shipping in the Caribbean, with the emphasis on ports of call and turn around in cruise ship ports. The conference will also explore the US Coast Guard passenger ship and passenger terminal security regulations and the US Coast Guard intelligence sharing and threat awareness.