China's shipping industry should adopt a compulsory liability insurance system to alleviate environmental damage and property and human loss in the face of an increasing number of marine accidents, said an official with the State Maritime Safety Administration.
Speaking at the first China International Shipping Technology and Equipment Exhibition held at the northern port city of Tianjin last week, deputy director of the administration Liu Dehong said a law should be drafted to force ship owners, especially smaller shipping companies, to buy third party liability insurance.
In this way, even if the ship owner cannot afford to compensate for losses caused by an accident, the victim, the third party, can still get reimbursement from an insurance company.
Moreover, passengers should be required to buy life insurance when boarding a boat or ship, said Liu.
This kind of compulsory insurance system could help avoid financial trouble and embarrassment following marine accidents that claim large numbers of lives or oil spill accidents which pollute the environment, he said.
In December 24, 1999, the passenger ship Dashun capsized and sank in the Bohai Bay off Yantai, killing 282 people on board. The company that owned the ship could not afford compensation for the losses.
In order to prevent social unrest, the local government was forced to reimburse the families of the deceased.
In 1995, two ships collided in Zhanjiang, a port city in the southern province of Guangdong. One of the ships spilled 35 tons of crude oil into the sea.
The local People's Court auctioned off the ship that caused the spill. But the money received was still not enough to cover the cost of the clean-up, which totalled 360,000 yuan (US$43,500).
After 20 years of development, following the start of reform and opening-up policies, China has established a fleet of about 360,000 vessels, totalling 50 million tons. The seventh largest fleet in the world is cruising in the country's 18,000 kilometres of coastal line and 110,000 kilometres of rivers.
As the traffic increases on China's waterways, the number of accidents has also increased.
Statistics indicate that in the last 10 years, 14,900 marine accidents have occurred in China, in which 3,107 vessels and 6,084 lives were lost, a loss totalling 1.9 billion yuan (US$230 million).
(China Daily 07/03/2001)
