ABSTRACT

Maritime security and rescue operations play a crucial role in safeguarding human lives at sea, responding to emergencies, and ensuring the safety of maritime activities. thus a study on the maritime security and rescue operations at the is inevitable. This Study title “evaluation of marine security and rescue operations at the Douala seaport” has been a topic of great importance for academics from different areas for several decades. In this sense, this study analyzes the maritime security and rescue operations at the Douala seaport, identify the security challenges and suggest strategies to improve on maritime security and rescue operations.  It is evident that several maritime security operations have been carry out at the Douala seaport adopting different operational strategies. For the descriptive and correlational statistical analysis of the variables, the SPSS software was used. he other section presents the methodology of the study used. Subsequently the respective results are presented along with a discussion. According to the results of the findings, it is evident that there are many challenges face by the security and rescue unit at the Douala seaport. however, the researcher during the in-depth analyses discovered that there are a handful of strategic ways to reduce the rate of challenges face during the security and rescue operations. This strategy is very significant to the security rescue team.

Key words: maritime security, rescue operations,

 CHAPTER ONE

GENERAL INTRODUCTION

This chapter is divided into the following subsections; background of the study, statement of the problem, research questions, objectives, hypotheses, scope of the study, significance of the study, organisation of the study and definition of key terms.

Background to the study

 The Republic of Cameroon is a country in Central Africa bordered by Nigeria to the West, Chad to the Northeast, The Central African Republic to the East, Gabon and the Republic of Congo to the South. Cameroon’s coastline lies in the bight of bonny, part of the Gulf of Guinea and the Atlantic Ocean.

With more than 400km long of coastline, Cameroon has five ports; the Kribi seaport, the limber and Tiko seaport, the port of Garoua.

The Douala port located in the littoral region and handles about 95% of imports and exports for the country as well as some neighboring landlocked countries like the Central African Republic, Chad and even the Northern Congo Brazzaville making it a gateway to these countries and a pole of reference at the heart of the Gulf of Guinea (Cameroon National Ports Authority, 2015)

Shipping has been the most economical means of transportation since antiquity and today it is also one of the biggest means of transportation (Mitsatsos, 2005; Mortensen & Rasmussen, 2003). In a true sense shipping is the only international industry that has made globalization possible (Boutilier, 2005; Insall, 2003). Statistics indicates that 90% of the world trade (United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, 2008, p. 14) is carried by 50,5251 ships registered in about 150 countries, manned by 466,000 officers and 721,000 ratings2 (Chamberlain, 2008). Human quests for achieving greater efficiencies have made the shipping industry sophisticated, and ships more efficient and hi-tech. The maritime industry has been growing at a fast pace (“Shipping and World Trade : Key facts”) and this boom is expected to continue due to globalization, increased economic liberalization and strong, sustainable growth in Indian, Chinese and other developing countries’ economy (Chellaram, 2004; DeSimone, 2008, March). UNCTAD3 reported a growth of 8.5% at the beginning of 2007 and a corresponding expansion of the merchant fleet to 1.04 billion dead weight tonnage (UNCTAD, 2007). Today the shipping industry has assumed an international character not only because it carries every kind of cargo, but also since the crew that man the ships belong to virtually from every nationality (Sklet, 2006).

The history of maritime Navigation since ancient times has always been accomplices by the frequent occurrence of shipwrecks.in the wake of accidents and disasters, the concept of maritime safety system came gradually to the fore.

Maritime security is understood as a matrix of its relation to other concepts, such as marine safety, sea power, blue economy and resilience.

 However, it was not reliable until the adoption of the first sea (SOLAS, 1994) convention considered as the response of the international community to the sinking of the titanic where more than 1500 passengers and srew members died, that the notion of marine safety system came into existence.

In the beginning of maritime safety was composed of ships safety and the safety issues. with technological innovations more and more elements.

Maritime transport accounting for about 12 billion tons of cargo transported by over 50000 ships sailing through the oceans remains an indispensable means of transportation of goods and contributes substantially to the vitality of international trade and economic growth across the globe (UNCTAD, 2018).

The inspection regime was implanted into these maritime international regulatory conventions and subsequently regional cooperation on port state control (PSC) was developed (Bang & Jang, 2012). It is necessary to highlight that these PSC regimes exist because some ship owners and flag states use loopholes created by the international nature of the industry to save cost by operating below the minimum safety standards (Ozcayir, 2018).

The operation of these substandard ships has been the leading cause of accidents resulting in damage to the marine environment, cargo and human lives. In order to limit the prevalence of these substandard ships, the intervention of port states has been the last resource to limit dumping at sea given that according to the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, maritime transport and dumping at sea contribute about 20% of marine pollution and approximately 600 thousand tons of oil enters the oceans as a result of normal shipping operations and illegal discharges annually (UNCED, 1992).

Statement problem

Given Cameroon’s growing interest in seaborne trade and port infrastructures, its geographical location makes it an ideal hub for regional seaborne trade. It should, therefore, consider taking all necessary measures to ensure maritime safety on harbor and rescue protection so as to assure the sustainability of the maritime domain and all other sectors that depend on it. Due to illegal importation of goods and hazard insecurity with the arrival of ships and clearance of goods.  It is therefore necessary to place laws and measures to ensure the security. The increasing importation and exportation of goods, movement of people by sea has been associated with more robbery, illegal trafficking of goods. Thus the activity of maritime security is very necessary.

1.3 Research questions

            The study made use of main and specific research questions. These questions are as follows:

1.3.1 Main question

Which are the marine security and rescue operations at the Douala seaport?

1.3.2 Specific questions

• What are the security challenges at the Douala seaport?
• What are the difficulties of maritime security?
• What strategies can be employed to improve on maritime security and rescue operations at the Douala seaport?

1.4 Research objectives

The study made use of main and specific research objectives. These questions are as follows;

1.4.1 Main objective

To investigate the marine security and rescue operations at the Douala seaport.

Specific objectives

1 To evaluate the maritime security and rescue operations at the Douala seaport.

• To identify the security challenges.
• To suggest strategies to improve on maritime security and rescue operations.