New Merchant Shipping Act to be ‘localised’- Ishma Rhymer
![The Government of the Virgin Islands, acting through the Attorney General’s Chambers, is inviting qualified, professional, experienced, and resourceful candidates to submit Expressions of Interest to create a specialist panel to provide legislative drafting services for the comprehensive review of the maritime laws of the [British] Virgin Islands. Photo: GIS](https://www.virginislandsnewsonline.com/cache/images/800x_e_expression_of_interestmaritime_legislative_services_social_media.jpg)
The primary objective of this undertaking is to create a Legislative Drafting Maritime Panel consisting of individuals who can efficiently and effectively provide the required legal drafting services to the Government to draft the primary and subsidiary legislation required to give effect to the review of the British Virgin Islands’ maritime laws, to undertake peer review of drafts produced by other drafters as part of the Project and to liaise with them on their projects where appropriate.
According to a press release from Government Information Services (GIS) on September 7, 2022, candidates must be a qualified Solicitor, Barrister or Attorney-at-Law, be able to demonstrate an advanced level of the English language, have an ability to assimilate complex facts quickly, be able to exercise sound judgment, and preferably possess a diploma or Master of Laws in legislative drafting.
Maritime legislation to be ‘localised’
Procurement Coordinator, Mrs Ishma Rhymer said, “The aim of the Project is to consolidate and localise this legislation, as far as is possible, into local BVI laws”, adding that, “The intention is that the Merchant Shipping Act 2001 should be repealed in its entirety and replaced by a new ‘Merchant Shipping’ Act.”
This Act, according to the GIS press release, would cover the four principal subject areas of maritime regulatory laws including regulation of merchant shipping, regulation of fishing vessel safety, wreck and salvage, and measures to protect the marine environment.
Legislative drafting services being solicited
Electronic submissions in a non-editable format not exceeding 10MB should be sent to the Procurement Coordinator at email address procurement@gov.vg. The filename and the email subject must bear the applicant’s name and “EOI for Legislative Drafting Services (Maritime Panel) for BVI”.
Expressions of Interest must be submitted no later than Monday, September 26, 2022, at 12:00 noon. Expression of Interest submitted after this time will not be considered and will be rejected, the press release stated.
Submissions will be opened on Tuesday, September 27, 2022 at 11:00 a.m. Bidders who wish to witness the opening process may request the WebEx access code and password from the Procurement Coordinator at procurement@gov.vg with subject “EOI for Legislative Drafting Services (Maritime Panel) for BVI” by noon on Monday, September 26, 2022.
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10 Responses to “New Merchant Shipping Act to be ‘localised’- Ishma Rhymer”
Right now, Marine Police can not write on the water tickets for violations (including when people are run over by power boats and killed). YES, that's right. You can run over someone in your boat in the BVI and kill them and not even get a ticket!
There are too many cowboys in over-powered boats not following the rules. There will be no way to correct this if there is no enforcement. The BVI needs to pay attention to this and put enforcement in place (must include fines and imprisonment and not just slaps on the wrist).
All we need is for the BVI to follow the international rules of the road - this is already in place all over the world. This needs to include no-wake zone enforcement in mooring fields and anchorages (that's where the tourists deaths are happening).
Under the NDP government, Mark Vanterpool I think it was proposed getting rid of the Law reform commission which is needed in particularly every country to keep updating existing laws and creating new ones. At the time they had town hall meetings and GIS interviews with the commissioner to inform the public about new legislation and I recall you could have submitted ideas as well which at the time was very remarkable. But when they announced they were getting rid of the department I said we are surely going back as a nation.
That is why in 2022 the bvi is still using a criminal code, commission of inquiry act 1800, immigrants housed at Castle marina, accused on remand for years, trials for simple traffic violations instead of tickets, no stenographers in magistrate courts, magistrate still take evidence in a diary, bvi still apart of the the ECSC instead of a BVI Law Court, similar to Cayman and Burmuda, the backwardness continues.
If we had a commission in place the maritime laws would have been updated and codified as required instead of this expensive haphazard exercise.
During this difficult living cost crisis those funds should have gone towards helping families in need.