TNAG-2897-FCO40-4171-Hong-Kong-piracy-in-the-South-China-Sea-1993 — Page 78

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"Vital" warnings. The two latter categories may be transmitted outside normal schedules, but "Important" messages will have to wait until the next available. time period when the NAVTEX frequency is not in use (i.e. not used by other station operating in adjacent areas and whose transmissions are co-ordinated between all stations in such areas). If and when a station has a "Vital" message to transmit, it should, if necessary, contact any other station in the process of transmitting a "Routine" warning and request it to break its transmission until the "Vital" warning has been transmitted.

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In view of these factors, IMO should consider authorizing warnings of piracy attacks to be defined as "Important" whenever such warnings can be transmitted sufficiently early to enable ships to take precautions appropriate to preventing attacks. In exceptional circumstances it should also be possible to use the "Vital" category, if the scheduled transmissions in the area are such that significant delays to a piracy warning would be the result, if the warning is classified only as "Important". In the opinion of the Group, such a decision would be an important contribution to preventing piracy and armed robbery and is, therefore, recommended. This view was generally supported by those representatives of the Administration of the three countries which the Group met during its tour of the Malacca/Singapore Strait area. It should also be noted that all three States in the area will all be able to use the Singapore NAVTEX station for such transmissions.

38 In relation to the question of priority classification of NAVTEX warnings, IMO should also consider defining a new "subject indicator" for "Piracy warning messages", to be included in the preamble of each message (i.e. the "B2-character").

39 Navigational and meteorological warnings constitute a large percentage of NAVTEX messages and this system is, therefore, also very important for safety of navigation.

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Certain piracy threat areas but no part of the Malacca/Singapore Strait area are outside coverage of NAVTEX stations. In general, such areas will be covered by the INMARSAT EGC (SafetyNET) system. It is, therefore, recommended that authorities having responsibility (due to the areas being within own territorial waters or because the areas are within the area of responsibility of their RCC(s) for areas not covered by NAVTEX, to make arrangements with one or more Coast Earth Station(s) covering relevant areas so as to be registered as "information providers". Under such arrangements important safety related messages, e.g. regarding piracy, distress situations, navigational warnings and messages related to pollution prevention may be transmitted as EGC SafetyNET messages to ships. It is not mandatory for SOLAS ships, however, not (yet) to fit EGC receivers. Newbuildings can wait until 1 February 1995, and existing ships until 1 February 1999 (and certain ships may be exempted from these requirements), unless a ship voluntarily converts to the GMDSS prior to these dates. Thus it should be taken into account that, for the coming years (at least up to 1999), a number of ships will not be able to receive INMARSAT EGC messages. Therefore, whenever EGC-messages are sent to areas outside NAVTEX coverage, relevant authorities are recommended to repeat such warnings on other radio systems/frequencies provided it is possible in practice to cover these areas with systems on which ships are required to keep a listening watch. However, it should be recognized that this will frequently not be possible in areas outside NAVTEX coverage.

W/9181e