Photos show: Ship "Kotor" far from "catastrophic technical condition"

Photos from the engine room of the ship "Kotor" of the Crnogorska plovidba company, which were exclusively obtained by "Vijesti", show that the ship is far from being "in catastrophic technical condition", as the Ministry of Maritime Affairs has been publicizing for almost a month.

At the proposal of this ministry, led by Minister Filip Radulović (PES), the government decided on Thursday to sell both ships of the 100 percent state-owned company Crnogorska plovidba on the market because, allegedly, both ships are neglected and in poor condition and need to be sold before they further deteriorate or are forcibly sold at court auctions by the creditors of Crnogorska plovidba to whom it owes money for various services.

Almost two months ago, the Ministry of Maritime Affairs initiated the process of programmed shutdown of Crnogorska plovidba, which it presented to the public as an alleged attempt to "rescue" the company by signing a controversial contract on business and technical cooperation between Crnogorska and Barska plovidba.

The ultimate goal of this scenario written in the "Plan for the Restructuring of Shipping Companies of Montenegro" and which was commissioned by the Ministry of Maritime Affairs and created by the company "Računovođa" from Podgorica is actually the closure of 100 percent of the state-owned company Crnogorska plovidba Kotor and the transfer of its two most valuable resources - the ships "Kotor" and "Dvadesetprvi maj" unencumbered by loans, or their monetary equivalent, to the portfolio of Barska plovidba, in which, however, the state has only 55 percent ownership.

According to the further scenario in the plan, this means that the state would have to buy out the shares of minority shareholders of Barska, if, despite the large amount of new capital injected into the company, it wants to reach a 2/3 share that would allow it to make strategic decisions on what and how Barska will do next.

The ship "Kotor" was stopped on June 15th in the American port of Savannah by the so-called port state control, an inspection by the US Coast Guard, due to a total of nine procedural, organizational and minor technical deficiencies discovered on it.

None of these shortcomings, in and of themselves, make the "Kotor" technically defective and unseaworthy, which is what the Ministry of Maritime Affairs and the executive director of Barska plovidba, Boris Mihailović, are trying to portray to the Montenegrin public.

In an attempt to create a narrative about the alleged "catastrophic condition" of the ship "Kotor" that would, in their opinion, justify the decision to urgently sell the ship, they went so far as to release to the public information about the ship's shortcomings allegedly discovered by an inspector from the classification society Bureau Veritas, whose class the "Kotor" is in, and information about which class the ships of Crnogorska belong to in terms of exhaust gas content from the propulsion complex, compared to the younger and more technologically advanced ships of the Barska plovidba company.

None of this data, however, is an argument for the publicly made claim about the "catastrophic condition" of the "Kotor", nor do any possible remarks by the class inspector (in this case Bureau Veritas) make the ship unseaworthy.

Only the findings of the PSC inspection, or the US Coast Guard, are relevant for this, as they alone can prohibit a ship from leaving the port due to possible technical deficiencies or poor general condition.

In addition, despite claims that both ships of Crnogorska plovidba are in a "catastrophic condition", the Ministry of Maritime Affairs has not yet sent inspectors from the Technical Inspectorate of Vessels and Floating Objects of the Maritime Safety Administration of Montenegro to the "Kotor" stopped in Savanna, in whose register the vessel is registered and who would have to continuously monitor it and monitor its technical condition, acting as the so-called Flag State Control (control by the state whose flag the vessel flies).

Likewise, the Ministry of Maritime Affairs has not yet sent a single official authorized for such cases to the "Kotor" - the navigation safety inspector, Captain Grujica Dudić, who is authorized to, as an FSC inspector, control vessels flying the Montenegrin flag in domestic and international navigation.

Experienced seafarers - captains, engine managers and technical inspectors (surveyors) to whom "Vijesti" showed photographs taken yesterday from the "Kotora" engine room - are unanimous in their assessment that "the engine room looks like a pharmacy" in terms of tidiness and that "a ship whose heart - the engine room - looks this good, certainly cannot be in catastrophic condition."