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22
Although not directly related to anti-piracy, safety of navigation and pollution prevention, it is worth noting in relation to safety in general that. Indonesia has established a Mission Control Centre and two "Local User
Terminals (LUTs)" for the COSPAS-SARSAT system, These installations provide a complete real time coverage of all areas under consideration, and will ensure minimum alerting delays when ships in these areas are using COSPAS-SARSAT EPIRBS for distress alerting. Both LUTS cover all relevant frequencies (i.e. 406, 121.5 and 243 MHz).
Communications between shore authorities
23 In MSC/Circ.597 IMO recommends that Maritime RCCs take the role of being the point of contact for ships when reporting cases of attack or attempted attack. This solution may be suitable in many countries/areas, but discussions with the authorities in the Malacca/Singapore Strait area have revealed that this may not be the best solution in all countries. In this respect, it should be realized that in cases of piracy attack, the role of the RCC will normally be limited to the role of being the point of contact; the actual post-attack operations will, generally speaking, be a task solely for law enforcement agencies.
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24 Thus, in those countries which do not have their RCC manned 24 hours a day for instance Singapore whose Maritime RCC will generally not be manned until an accident requiring their involvement is actually reported the use of RCCs as points of contact could introduce unnecessary delays. Therefore, in such countries, each coast radio station which may receive messages from ships regarding piracy and armed robbery, should be instructed and are so instructed in Singapore to contact directly the appropriate law enforcement agency. Thus it is recommended that the IMO recommendation be amended in this respect, so that ships are requested to contact an appropriate coast station or Coast Earth Station in case of attack. Each coast station should then be instructed to pass such information to the relevant law enforcement agency directly, or via an RCC, in those countries which decide that it is desirable to use their RCCs as points of contact in such situations. In the INMARSAT system, each Coast Earth Station will automatically route any message with "Priority 3" (Distress priority) to an RCC for subsequent action.
25
As noted above, messages/reports from vessels regarding piracy attacks will normally be received by a coast station (or Coast Earth Station) and should then be passed on to the appropriate law enforcement agency, either directly or via an RCC. The Group was informed that there are established fixed point-to-point communication lines between the national RCCs in the three countries concerned, both for telephone, telefax and telex communications. Practical experience regarding reliability and availability of these communication lines, as summarized to the Group, have so far been very good.
26 For the other types of communication, inter-links between coast stations, maritime authorities, law enforcement agencies, RCCs, etc., within each country as well as between such authorities in the three countries, different technical solutions are used; i.e. partly dedicated (leased) point-to-point lines; partly the ordinary switched telecommunication networks, and partly radio links. In general, dedicated point-to-point lines will be the most reliable and will also permit the use of the ordinary switched telecommunication networks as back-up and are, therefore, generally recommended for these types of communications. However, based on the
information the Group received, the reliability of the ordinary switched networks seems to be
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