TNAG-0357-FCO40-393-Registration-of-merchant-shipping-in-Hong-Kong-1972 — Page 161

Notes of a Meeting between H.E. the Governor and Mr. Y.K. Pao, Governing Director of World Wide Shipping at noon on Wednesday, 10th November, 1971

at Government House

リ

Mr. Pao put forward the arguments, summarised in his letter of 15th June, 1971 and in the Director of Marine's brief, for the liberalization of the conditions of the Hong Kong Registry and the creation of an autonomous Hong Kong Registry independent of the U.K. and Commonwealth Agreements. He explained the difficulties which he was facing in operating his British registered ships, as the four senior officers were required by law to be British subjects.

It was proving difficult to recruit such officers and furthermore (and possibly more important) temporary exempted officers gave rise to the problems noted in the last sentence of the third paragraph of Mr. Pao's letter. H.E. sympathised with Mr. Pao's point of view and in principle accepted that only the Master of the vessel should legally have to be of British nationality. H.E. emphasised, however, the need for the Government to ensure that any modifications to the conditions of the Hong Kong Registry would not involve

drop in standards, and suggested that the safety requirements required under the Merchant Shipping Act appeared to present no difficulty to World Wide Shipping but that the question of manning appeared to be most important. If the Government were to legislate for a Hong Kong Registry it would still need to abide by the Commonwealth Agreements. The Director of Marine would require the standard of officers to be at least as high as those with British qualifications, but it could mean that only the Master of a ship registered in Hong Kong would require to be of British nationality. In this context H.E. also noted that, as pointed out at paragraph 12 of the Director of Marine's brief, the success rate at present in the Hong Kong examination centre was very low, and that new legislation would not necessarily resolve all the manning difficulties if newly qualified officers from Hong Kong could not be found.

2.

Mr.

The second problem concerned the specifications of the ships to be registered and it was noted that many of the World Wide ships are manufactured in Japan and, as such, the materials used in their construction are not acceptable to the Department of Trade and Industry in the U.K. for use in a British registered ship as the materials have never been submitted to D.T.I. for type testing. Pao mentioned that the materials used and the safety equipment of ships constructed in Japan were satisfactory to Lloyds, but he did not commit himself on the standard of crew accommodation. H.E. noted that the Merchant Shipping Act (by which Hong Kong is bound), was in some respects out of context in Hong Kong conditions, and agreed that there was a need to consider conditions to be applied to the use of national products. Those conditions applied by other maritime countries are not strictly applicable to Hong Kong as we are not yet manufacturers of equipment for ocean going vessels.