As the ocean freight industry continues to grapple with the fall-out from dangerous goods misdeclaration – with the fire aboard the 10000-TEU Cosco Pacific the most recent case in point – the airfreight industry has taken decisive action to address the issue head on.A new international regulation will soon be implemented that provides a framework for ‘competency-based training’. “The Icao (International Civil Aviation Organization) has come up with this for the parties involved in dangerous goods shipping, including “airfreight forwarders” and “shippers”. Under this regulation, all shippers will be required to train their employees in the proper handling of dangerous goods which includes identifying, classifying, packing, marking, labelling and documenting, subject to international regulations.“This global initiative will be implemented on 1 January 2021, which means that there will soon be a “global” movement in shippers training their employees in the handling of dangerous goods in an appropriate manner,” says Tom Shinya, an International Union of Marine Insurers (IUMI) committee member.It’s an issue that will affect everyone, and it's an issue about which Professional Aviation Services’ David Alexander is passionate.Dangerous goods need to be packed and declared correctly. People often don’t know how to pack – and if you have a large quantity of lithium batteries close to inf lammable liquid it will become a very big problem.”The consequences for air were particularly dire, he said. “Which is why we are working very hard on education – and that includes training this month in Johannesburg and Cape Town by a specialist team from Iata.Shinya says it’s top of mind for the insurance industry. He uses the ocean freight example of the MSC Flaminia case decision in September 2018 to illustrate the dire consequences of misdeclaration for the parties involved, with both shipper and NVOCC facing a significant amount of liability. The US district court determined that the shipper and the NVOCC had breached the legal duty of warning as well as the contract. It was found that the chemical cargo was already at risk due to negligence before being loaded on the vessel although not reported as such. “The point is, these catastrophic losses are not caused by acts of God but by human error, which means they are avoidable.”
INSERT: These catastrophic losses are not caused by acts of God but by human e rror.– Tom Shinya
