Floating Armories and PMSC
Being a PMS company owner, we are in a position to give you a insight of this business, how PMSC operates, what is happening now and in which area, what is the difficulty a PMSC faces because of different regulations and what can be done to safeguard national security in conservation with PMSC operations. I will start with floating armory. It is normally an offshore vessel or smaller vessels where PMSC store their weapons, ammunitions, body armor, satellite phone and many other accessories. They also provide temporary accommodation to security guards who disembark from a ship and then re-embark on another ship. Nowadays each vessel has about 3 – 6 weapons depending upon owner’s requirement. For each weapon normally they carry about 120 – 250 ammunition, so if you have a team of 6, the vessels carries about 1500 ammunition. They also carry body armor, helmets etc which is not a threat.
Floating Armories – Legal Complications
How they are registered, where they are registered and how legal it is? Now you see that Djibouti government has given licenses to some floating armories, some floating armories have Sri Lanka flag, Panama flag, UAE, Mongolia and other flag of convenience. Out of these the Djibouti ones have some control on their floating armories and the floating armories of Sri Lanka also have some government control. As regards other floating armories, no inspection, nobody controls it and it is operated by private companies. Those companies are also offshore companies. They could not use their code of service for their platform so they use it here.
Current Scenario
Conditions of most of these floating armories are not very good. Most of them are under flag of convenience. Floating armory operations in Sri Lanka grown from 200 in 2012 to 800 in 2014. If we look at from PMSC’s perspective, the Indian Government has neither created any infrastructure nor made any arrangement for the weapons to be embarked, disembarked or even temporarily stored in any of the ports. So if a vessel is coming from East China going to Kandla, she does not know what cargo she is carrying next. For a ship owner if he comes to Kandla and his next voyage is to HRA then he will have to sail all the way to Sri Lanka and pick up the weapons or he goes to Fujairah, picks up the weapons there and crosses HRA. So for safety reasons what he will do is pick up the guards from Sri Lanka and goes back to Kandla. Although he does not need guards along the Indian coast but he has already given $25,000 to $30,000 to somebody because he cannot afford to sail from Kandla back to Sri Lanka just to pick up guards. So right now we will see about 10% of the vessels coming to this side just waste this money because shipping business is not certain, all the voyages after reaching India are not fixed and after discharging cargo, the commercial department is fixing cargo. Sometimes what happens is they pick up guard in Sri Lanka come to India, they can pick up one guard with weapons come to Indian west coast and if they get a voyage to HRA then they want to collect the other team in India. Now certain companies accept Indian guards and Indian guards can join in India. But if it is a foreign guard, the foreigner must come to India with X1 visa which is in the name of that vessel. Suppose vessel MDX is in Kandla and she is going to finish cargo in 2 days and she is going to Suez, how a PMSC can obtain visa in 2 days in the name of that vessel? It is not possible. So what the owner will do? Certain owners like Indian or Sri Lankan guards so they will pick up 4 guards in Sri Lanka come to India at the port and if the vessel does not go to East, they will drop them. But this costs 30,000 or so which is a waste for them. Luckily, if the vessel goes to HRA at least 50% of the cost is saved. Suppose if Indian Government had allowed temporary storage of weapons in at least 2-3 places something in North Gujarat and Tutikorin, any vessel which is coming from West can drop its weapons. Now normally all the ports are under the government so there is no private security company if they can temporarily store the weapons until the vessel sails, the next vessel which is here can pick up the weapons from here and go. That is an advantage to shipping in India. We have no information on who is picking up guards, how many weapons are picked up. In case of weapons picked up in Sri Lanka, they have the entire data base. If we can create facility it is good for the intelligence agency in our country to know how many weapons are moving in this area, what is the nationality of a person handling these weapons? By making arrangement of having coast guard and navy on board, all the data of weapons available near the Indian coast will be available.
When market was good, 50,000 was being paid but today the price is 12000. Any vessel can tell you that it is not possible to give you quality service, but from the business point of view if others are doing it at $12000, we do it at $12000, otherwise we might have to close our business. You can do anything to remain in the market. You have a security guard society and when you can pay 6000 or 50000 for a guard, for 6000 you cannot expect a commando. You are paying peanuts, you will get monkeys. But who is affected? A vessel coming to the Indian cost with 6 weapons and 6 guards from any nationality from the neighboring country may be they are becoming cheaper than Indians. Indians are cheaper then the British. So guards are available from neighboring countries at 50% cost than the Indians. You have no data about who is sent to our ports, where he is trained. Their training will be zero. They are sending third grade guards in our ports with weapons. There is only a bonded sticker. The guy whenever he wants can pick up the weapon and fire. While tanker is being discharged they can fire. This is the threat we have today. As a PMSC I would suggest that Government of India must create infrastructure so that there is better control on movement of weapons on the Indian coast and EEZ. How this can be done, you can track the vessel weapons and personnel if you have the necessary. You can issue CDC with limitation to serve as PMSC guards only. If you issue CDC to army people, at least they will get some job. Only DG Shipping Master’s Office issues CDCs. Again they say we need national CDC which we cannot obtain. So loss of opportunity for Indian people. If we design a procedure by which floating armories can be operated or if we make a regulation that 2 guys from defense will be on board, the commercial operator can pay for the same. Policies for the floating armory, operating regulations for the floating armory, how you want to operate, what restrictions you want to put. The visa procedures for foreigners be reviewed if he is joining as seaman or guard. If somebody gets order on Friday and vessel is sailing on Sunday, nothing can be done. The port clearance procedures need revision. The arms license procedures can be modified suitably to suit working. I cannot get license for my Benelli in India or for Browning Bar Match on the ship. Persons having their own weapons are allowed to go on ships. We can train Indian personnel going on ships in the use of different weapons and practices. So if we have 10000 people with good weapons, they can also be used in emergency for national security. There are people who are trained free of cost and who are kept fit free of cost. The use of defense and navy people and they being kept ready at all times. This is third line of defense. If you are operating PMSC, you can authorize to bring certain arms and ammunition which can be kept under government control. Personnel from defense on the ships can control that. Courses of anti piracy and weapon handling can be conducted. Here we cannot use any other bore of guns than .22. You are training a guy on .22 and then giving him a Benelli, Browning and others to use. We pay $650 per day to hire a guard in Sri Lanka. Many guards are being trained in Sri Lanka every day. We also have so many firing ranges in India, which can be used for PMSC as well!
Capt. Alok Kumar is founder and chairman of Alphard Maritime Group of companies with its head office in Mumbai and presence across India, London, Singapore, China, Dubai, Nigeria, Philippines and Sri Lanka. Capt. Alok had set up Group’s UTG services division in 2009 and since then his company has serviced over 2000 vessels across the globe, extended to Hull Management, NDT, Dry Docking and Offshore among other agency services. In 2012, when the world witnessed piracy attacks, Capt. Alok started PMSC services providing armed guards for protecting and maintaining peace on vessels in sea, the business today is engaged by ship management companies and charters worldwide for its world class service quality, compliance standards, approvals and classifications from all major bodies globally. Mr. Roy Paul of MHPRP awarded Capt. Alok as ‘Seafarer Entrepreneur of the Year’ at 14th Sailor Today awards. This award was to recognize contribution of Capt. Alok and Alphard Maritime in making sea safer for all.
