MV Captain Inoke Yet to be Surveyed, Passed: MSAF

The Maritime Safety and Authority of Fiji (MSAF) has confirmed that Goundar Shipping Limited’s new Fast Ferry- MV Captain Inoke is yet to be surveyed and passed by the authority.

This means that it was still a foreign vessel.

MV Captain Inoke arrived in Fiji with a Mongolian flag at around 6am on Friday and was expected to berth at the Suva Port at 1pm.

MSAF chief executive officer, Joweli Cawaki said the vessel was still a foreign vessel at this stage.

“At the moment the vessel is registered as a foreign vessel by the Board of control, and it hasn’t been registered by us yet,” Mr Cawaki said.

“It won’t be able to move around because it hasn’t been registered yet and that will probably happen next week.”

Mr Cawaki said they have been in touch with the managing director of Goundar Shipping Limited, George Goundar, and that an application is expected from them by next week.

“If they want that vessel to start moving around then they need to register it,” he said.

Goundar’s response
Mr Goundar agreed that the vessel was registered under the Fiji Revenue Customs Authority (FRCA) as a foreign vessel but argued that it was owned by a registered Fijian businessman.

“As you can see it came under a Mongolian flag; MSAF took our surveyors up to Korea because of the Political issues there, so we had to bring it down on a different flag,” he said.

“Early morning today we had a little hiccup where the Ports and the other departments refused to accept this vessel.

“I told them that I am a locally registered owner with Fijian registered vessels.

“I brought the vessel out of Korea because it’s too cold up there. So, it will take us about one- or two-months of maintenance here, upgrading the computers on board.”

Mr Goundar said there was alot of hate speech coming from other rival companies, however that was not going to deter him from doing his job, serving Fiji.

“This vessel cost me over $7 million dollars and the other coming around June or July is about $3 million dollars,” he said.

“Stop with the politics, I’m here to serve the people. Just let the people choose.”

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