06/005 - Poor Maintenance

Presently due to the Owners' and Managers' style of operation, the work load is more for me, as I am going deep into each defects, listing it out, analysing and initiating rectification procedures, which involves too much of time, cross meetings and paper work. Presently staff is doing/attempting only bare minimum, breakdown maintenance required to prevent any operational or legal hassles (which itself is taking the whole 7x24 period), without maintaining any history of defects and it's rectification - thus the minor defects and the lack of routine maintenance, leads to further breakdown maintenance.

One scenario is for Ballasting/Deballasting:

Three tanks' valves do not operate from the Ballast Control Panel in the Engine Control Room (ECR). Therefore Ch/Officer and/or Deck/Officer with 2 persons have to come on Main Deck(from Ballast Control/ECR - Height 10Mtrs) and then climb down all the way to the duct keel to a straight undivided vertical ladder(24Mtrs), go all the way forward to the respective valve position(30 to 200Mtrs), operate it manually, then come up to the main deck (24Mrtrs) and then go down to the Ballast Control in ECR (10Mtrs), one deck down(No manhole from E/R bottom to Duck keel). Within one loading, 6 to 7 Enclosed Space Entry Checklists . While stripping, one person will have to be kept at the E/Room bottom platform to throttle one of the Eductor Valve!! - The Master who saw all these actions plus other matters as mentioned above, contracted insomnia and had to sign-off in 3 months and was relieved in about three months time.