Journal
Entry: August 29, 2016 Monday
Location:
OPL Anchorage area, Singapore
The four to
four hour working shift now has been implemented and as usual, most of the crew
here are wondering why the sudden change. Basically this four to four shift was
unnecessary at all in the first place and most people here are just standing
around doing nothing on those four hours, including myself.
For me, I
never cared about this and the only thing that mattered is that I finished this
working contract as soon as possible. It's not my call on that, and probably
the reason why the management here decided that a four to four hour shift would
be implemented was on the fact that they wanted to retain the number of people
working but wanted to pay less on the overtime., Smart but not that clever.
When my
work shift started, were now "entering the cargo tank" phase, which
mean that chief mate is looking inside the cargo tanks and seeing if the tank
cleaning methods were effective, but before entering those cargo tanks we had
to use a chain block to open those cargo hatches as it got stuck because of
heavy corrosion. Its hinges have apparently had fused badly on the rust and it
was a tedious work getting them moving again.
Late on my
watch , there has been another change on the schedule. This time the four to
four schedule still remains but there a "retention" on my afternoon
shift which I had to start two hours earlier.
For short I'd start work after coffee break which is 10:30 and work all
the way up to 4pm. Tsk, honestly I couldn't figure out what's going on in the
managements head here, and the new work schedules is no different from the 6 to
6 hour shift previously, and the worst part on this so called
"retention" is not being paid at all., as in free slave work for the
all mighty. His lordship - the "company dog" Myanmar ship captain .
In other
news on work.
I would
like to include on this journal entry that our lovely captain has been making
questionable decisions lately , such us making us dump oily water coming from
the pump room. Although he is saying it "indirectly" such as we have
to take a look if the water is oily enough then we should dump the water to the slop port side cargo tank , and if the
water is clear enough it should be dumped to the deck directly to the sea. The
captain wasn't exactly bright , and doesn't figured out that the water in the
pump room is mixed with black oil as like being put in a blender , separating
oil and water is absolutely impossible.
As
a result, they came with an idea that we should "filter" out the most
obvious part of the oily water - The black oily blobs, the black thing that
floats, based on the perception that oil is light than water . So he used
cotton and a lot of rags to filter and scoop floating oil particles. Anyway
despite all this talk it doesn’t change the fact that technically this ship is
still dumping oil at, and that they're lucky that Far East region (Asia pacific area) doesn’t have an
effective enforcement of maritime laws, like in this case MARPOL. As a
perception of an expendable rating like myself, doing a lot of prohibited stuff
is much easier in a third world country ( and region) is way a
lot easier to do than in European or in the America's (atlantic region)
, in my case and what I'm experiencing Captain Wai Phyo Aung (myanmar
national) and Chief Mate Sydney Santano D'souza (indian national) know fully the consequences of dumping oil at sea
especially in anchorage area and yet they made a willfully disobeyed on the
MARPOL law. Why ???? Because these company dogs wanted to impress the company
by saving money on the "cleaning crew service" that will de-muck this
ship. They care more of pleasing the company than obeying international law or
even crew welfare.
