1 The Maritime Safety Committee, at its sixty-seventh
session (2 to 6 December 1996) and the Marine Environment Protection
Committee, at its thirty-eighth session (1 to 10 July 1996), approved
the issuance of a new circular (MSC/Circ.781 - MEPC.6/Circ.2) combining
the lists of addresses, telephone and fax numbers and electronic mail
addresses of national contact points responsible for safety and pollution
prevention.
2 The present circular is an updated version of MSC/Circ.1103 - MEPC.6/Circ.9, and contains
information received by the Secretariat up to the date of this circular
and consists of the following annexes:
-
Annex 1 - amalgamated list
of national inspection services - head offices (originally MSC/Circ.630),
national inspection services - local offices (originally MSC/Circ.630),
inspection services acting as representatives of flag States for port
State control matters and responsible authorities in charge of casualty
investigation (originally MSC/Circ.542), as well as the Secretariats
of Memoranda of Understanding on Port State Control; and
-
Annex 2 - list of national
operational contact points responsible for the receipt, transmission
and processing of urgent reports on incidents involving harmful substances
including oil from ships to coastal.
3 Member Governments are invited to:
- inform the Secretariat of any changes or additions to the annexes;
- provide information on addresses, telephone, fax numbers and electronic
mail addresses of inspection services acting as representatives of
flag States in case of port States interventions; and
- notwithstanding the provisions of the 1974 SOLAS
Convention, as amended, with regard to communication of an
intervention, port State Authorities are requested, in order to expedite
communications, to additionally convey information, related to port
State control interventions, to those flag State inspection services
- Head Offices - listed in annex 1 or
to the inspection services acting as representatives of flag States,
when available.
4 The two annexes mentioned above are also available
on the Internet as follows: http://www.imo.org (select 'IMO Circulars/Contact points' or 'National Contacts'). The
lists on the Internet will be up-dated as changes and amendments are
received, but the printed copy of the list will only be revised and
re-issued annually. To facilitate the incorporation of any changes
to the existing entries, the Secretariat should be advised as follows: