The Kenya Ports Authority has begun unloading cargo from a ship that ran aground more than two months ago while sailing from the port of Mombasa to neighbouring Dar es Salaam carrying 209 containers.
The Mombasa port manager said about 96 shipping containers have so far been unloaded from the grounded vessel, owned by Comarco and chartered by Ms Messina. The vessel ran aground on May 29 off Levin Reef.
Strong winds and waves hampered the rescue operation to salvage the ship and its cargo, said William Ruto, director general of the Ports Authority.
“Despite several attempts over two weeks using tugboats, rescue efforts led by the Korea Ports Authority were hampered by adverse monsoon winds that hit the country between June and July 2024. As a result, rescue operations were suspended pending the weather to clear,” he said.
The head of the South Korean Ports Authority said a lighter ship would be deployed to remove all the shipping containers from the stranded barge.
“After extensive preparations, operations commenced last Wednesday, resulting in the successful transfer of 96 containers so far. The operation is expected to be completed with the transfer of all containers and the refloating of Barge 3651 by Saturday, August 10, 2024, subject to weather conditions,” Mr Ruto said.
The Kenya Maritime Authority (KMA) – the agency responsible for regulatory oversight of Kenya’s maritime industry – this week expressed concern over the delay in removing the stranded vessel, saying it risks damaging coral reefs.
“We have followed up on the delay in towing the vessel which the operators are blaming on high tide but have asked the relevant authorities to resume the salvage operation to avoid any further environmental degradation,” said KMA Marine Research Officer John Omondi.
“As KMA, we continue to conduct risk assessments to ensure that no contamination occurs, and we urge cargo owners to take alternative means of unloading the cargo.”
The Port of Mombasa is using smaller vessels to boost cargo movement to Zanzibar, Dar es Salaam and Comoros, helping improve cargo throughput which rose from 1.43 million metric tons in 2021 to 1.62 million metric tons in 2023.
To improve the numbers, the government is considering chartering ships to carry out cargo operations locally in a bid to recover more than Sh600 billion in revenue that currently goes to ships registered abroad annually.
Since Mombasa Port handles over two million containers annually, once the government enacts the cabotage law under the Merchant Shipping Act it will allow and facilitate the planned transshipment scheme and thus generate billions of shillings in revenue.
According to the authority, once the law is implemented, Kenya will start chartering ships from other shipping lines and take over the responsibility of transshipping goods from Mombasa as a hub port to other ports in the region.