- As Buhari blames MTN for Boko Haram casualties
Damen, the shipyard giant is presently basking in the tonnes of commendation being heaped on it from a customer, Iskes, following beyond -the -expectations performance of a recently delivered tug, the new ASD 2411 Venus.
Iskes Towage & Salvage which took delivery of the new Damen ASD 2411 in November 2015, rained the commendations as feedback, on occasion of its first 100 day, on the tug which has been performing vessel assistance duties in the locks and canals around the Dutch Ports of Amsterdam and IJmuiden.
The Venus crew
“We needed a compact tug that could work in the IJmuiden locks – but also a versatile one that could handle anything”, indicated Iskes Managing Director Jim Iskes, noting that with the shipyard, his experience had been: “You call them with what you want and they organise it. Then you get the key and you’re on your way. Of course, any new build has problems to start off, but Damen sorts them out. It’s top quality – what every ship owner really wants.”
The vessel’s captain, Auke de Haan, has worked for Iskes for six years, mainly on larger, but less powerful, tugs however. “I had my doubts about working on this relatively smaller tug, but these have turned out to be unfounded. We work a lot over the bow, towing in reverse, but her stern rises nicely out of the water with great course stability. She’s very manoeuvrable and can handle the power well thanks to the slipping clutches. I can perform manoeuvres with only 10 revs on the prop.”
While Captain De Haan is pleased with the visibility he has from the bridge, he does have some important feedback for Damen concerning the levels of comfort there. “The bridge could be more spacious,” he comments. “For example, there’s a good chair for the Captain, but only a simple bench for my crew.”
Below in the engine room, Wilco Wittekoek, the Venus’ Engineer, is well placed to comment on how the Venus has performed in her first 3 months of service. “She’s nice and quiet,” he says. “There’s quite a lot of electronics down here compared to some of the older tugs that I’ve worked on, but that’s unavoidable these days. And, being an engineer, it’s a shame that you can’t do much work on the engine. That all happens via the laptop. However, the shore support that we get from Caterpillar is very handy. Collecting and analysing data in this way really contributes to keeping the ship tip-top.”
The Damen ASD 2411 combines advantages of various tug designs. It has an impressive 70-tonne bollard pull for a 24-metre tug. The Venus, part of Iskes’ twelve-strong fleet operating out of Amsterdam, has assisted a wide variety of vessels since her delivery. In fact, her first ever job was helping a 280-metre bulk carrier out into the open sea and her second was handling a small fishing trawler.
Damen Shipyards Group operates 32 shipbuilding and repair yards, employing 9,000 people worldwide; and has delivered more than 6,000 vessels in more than 100 countries, with about 180 vessels annually delivered to customers worldwide.
In the meantime, failure of South African telecommunication company, MTN to disconnect millions of unregistered users aided the activities of Boko Haram, President Muhammadu Buhari has said. “You know how the unregistered GSM are being used by terrorists… That was why NCC (Nigerian Communications Commission) asked the MTN, Glo and the rest of them to register GSM,” Buhari told a joint a press conference held with the visiting President Jacob Zuma of South Africa.
He continued: “Unfortunately MTN was very slow and contributed to the casualties. And that was why the NCC looked at its regulations and imposed that fine on them.”
Nigerian Communication Commission had ordered all phone line operators to disconnect unregistered SIMs by mid-2015 on security grounds but MTN missed the deadline. The company was consequently fined a $3.9 billion.
It has since paid $250 million towards the penalty. The affair cast a shadow over the build-up to the visit of South African President Jacob Zuma and was expected to have been high on the agenda when he met Buhari for talks in the capital, Abuja. Buhari emphasised that the country had no intention of witch-hunting MTN.
He said the fine became imperative since unregistered lines were a security risk. “The concern of the federal government was basically on the security, not the fine imposed on the MTN,” he said.
Zuma arrived in Abuja on Tuesday morning in a visit which observers see as an attempt to mend fences between Africa’s largest economic powers. Pretoria is putting a positive spin on the visit, talking up the pair’s “good bilateral political, economic and social relations” and potential new business opportunities, AFP reports. Zuma has a sizeable ministerial and business delegation in tow and announced after meeting Buhari that “over 30 bilateral agreements and memoranda of understanding” had been signed.
“These agreements cover a wide range of cooperation areas including trade and industry, transport, energy, defence and security and immigration among others,” he said in a speech. He made no mention of MTN, which challenged the fine in court but withdrew its case to enable negotiations for an agreement.
Nigeria has asked South Africa for closer defence ties, including special forces training in operations against Boko Haram, military spokesman Rabe Abubakar announced late on Monday. But the MTN affair — and complaints from other South African firms in Nigeria — have dominated discussions against a background of tensions.
Additional report from The Guardian
