Safety Committee Meeting – Purpose and Objective

What is Safety Committee Meeting

The safety committee meeting is a get together of Master and safety officials
and Head of Departments and crew members in which the matter relating to
Quality, Health, Safety and Environment can be discussed.

As Per Code of Safe Working Practises (COSWP) the company is required to

appoint a Safety Committee on every Ship.

Appointment of Safety Committee as per COSWP

The appointment of Safety Committee and its effectiveness will depend upon
the commitment of its members, particularly Master.

Purpose of Safety Committee

The purpose of safety committee is to create a structural organisation dealing
with enhancement of onboard safety, to develop safe working atmosphere on
ship. It also includes safety or pollution prevention equipment as well as
working procedures on board. The safety committee creates the involvement
of entire ships crew in matters concerning safety, rather than it being limited to
top ranks. It encourages reporting of near miss and accidents.

Function of Safety Committee

The Following are main objective of Safety Committee, but should not be
limited to and other relevant topic should also be discussed as required.

 discussion on Safety, Health and Environment topics from all crew

 obtain contributions towards improving the Quality, Health, Safety and
Environment (QHSE) standards on board from all crew;
 Seek ways to eliminate unsafe practices;
 tell crew regarding safety and environment protection related information
to all crew;
 active participation from crew for safety, health and environment
protection related matters.
 SEEMP/TEEMP (Ship/Tanker Energy Efficiency Management Plan) can
be discussed in all QHSE meetings.

It should be the prime moto of safety committee that all staff on board are
encouraged to participate and are motivated to contribute their views or
concerns on working practices on board.

Below is extract from COSWP regarding safety committee,

Advise given to safety committee in COSWP

Composition of Safety Committee
Master – Chairman of committee and has overriding authority on matters of
safety.

Safety Officer – Chief Officer or Second Engineer or any other officer

appointed by the Master. A safety officer’s appointment terminates as soon as
he ceases to be employed in the particular ship.
(As per COSWP, on every sea going ship with five worker or more, company is
required to appoint a safety officer.)

Safety Representative -A safety representative is an elected person from

among the ships crew to represent the crew and discuss the matters related to
safety, health etc.
(As per COSWP, on every ship on which five or more seafarers are working,
the Company must make arrangements for the election of safety
representatives)

Criteria for Safety Representative is as follows:

 He must have at least 2 years of seagoing service,
 must be more than 18 years of age,
 if on tankers should have 6 month experience on a tanker,

Now the question how many safety representative can be elected?

Following is a guideline for number of Safety Representative that can be
elected.

 6 -15 crew onboard: 1 Safety representative elected officer and Rating

 15 – 30 crew onboard: 1 safety representative from officer and 1 safety
representative from rating
 30 + crew onboard: 1 safety representative from officer and 3 safety
representative from rating preferably 1each from Deck, Engine and
Galley)
(Officer’s Representative – at least one junior officer; Crew’s Representatives
– Bosun and/or at least one member of the crew)

The officer’s and crew’s representatives should be elected by the ship staff on
the basis of their enthusiasm and sincerity in the improvement of safety on
board the ship.

Once the safety Committee is appointed the composition needs to be logged

in the Deck log book or Official Log book as per some flag state requirements.

Safety committee meeting should be conducted at least once every MONTH.

Procedure for holding Safety Committee Meeting
To conduct the safety committee meeting it is important that all officer and
rating are present for the meeting except on on watch and hence meeting
should be conducted on various timing so that the officer or rating who did not
attend the meeting is able to attend the next meeting.

The first agenda of the meeting must always be the minutes of the previous
meeting and matters arising out of the last safety Meeting.

All decisions and actions taken with respect to previous safety meeting
observation and which have been completed must be reported and a record
made stating the closing of those items. Items which have not been completed
should be carried forward for the next meeting also reasons for items that
have not been completed should recorded and a target date mentioned for the
same item.

Safety officer inspection report and observation should be discussed.

Incident, injury, near miss or accident reports can be discussed in the meeting
to increase the crew awareness and avoid further similar incident/injury/near
miss/accidents.

Important Points to remember for meeting

 the agenda and associated documents should be circulated with members
to enable them to digest the contents and prepare for meeting
 if agenda is long, 2 meetings should be held and the priority topic should
be covered in first meeting
 last item on the agenda should be time and date of next meeting
 minutes of each meeting should be recorded and copy to be provided for
comments
 relevant extracts of agreed minutes should be forwarded to the company
by master

Ship safety officer

As per the International Safety Management (ISM) code, every ship must
appoint a ship safety officer (SSO) who has the knowledge, experience, and
skills to look over the important safety issues related to ship and its crew’s
health.

According to the ISM code, a ship’s safety officer should have a minimum of 2
years of consecutive sea service. In case of tanker ships the safety officer
should have 6 months of experience on a tanker ship in addition to 2 years of
consecutive sea service.

The appointed ship Safety officer should have the necessary qualities to
properly take the responsibilities as per the relevant provision of the ISM code.
He should also help in proper implementation of the ISM code on the ship.

Duties of ship safety officer

The safety officer of the ship is entitled to look over all the duties related to
safety of the ship. Some of the important duties include:

1. Safety Officer is the safety advisor onboard and provides valuable

assistance to the company in meeting its health and safety objectives
2. The safety officer shall be familiar with the principles and practice of risk
assessment, hazard identification etc.
3. He shall ensure that all personnel joining the ship are familiar with relavant
health and safety arrangements.
4. He shall regularly carry out health and safety inspection of the ship.
5. He shall carry out monthly inspection of the ship LSA/FFA to ensure that
they are ready to be used.
6. The safety officer may stop any work that he reasonably believes may
cause an accident and immediately inform master.
7. The safety officer shall have an independent view of safety on behalf of
the company
8. The safety officer shall encourage the ship staff to work safely and explain
them the cause of unsafe practise
9. The safety officer has to be himself a role model for carrying our safe
work.
10. He should carry out investigation of accident.
11. Maintain a record of all the accidents taking place on the ship, including
death, major or minor injury, and near death experiences. Also, make this
information available to the ship’s master, safety representative, or any
official of the company.