FISHING VESSELS: INPUT SOUGHT ON SEAFARER SAFETY, CONSTRUCTION REGULATIONS

FISHING VESSELS: INPUT SOUGHT ON SEAFARER SAFETY, CONSTRUCTION REGULATIONS

• 07 July 2025
• Transport
• SA Legal Academy

On 27 June 2025, the Department of Transport gazetted a notice calling for input by 29 August 2025 on draft regulations eventually published by the South African Maritime Safety ten days later, on 7 July 2025. Focusing on ‘fisher labour welfare’ and the construction and equipping of fishing vessels, the proposed new regulations:

• seek to give practical effect to:
  • Chapter 4 of the 1951 Merchant Shipping Act (dealing with seafarers), and
  • the ILO’s 2007 Work in Fishing Convention (‘in so far as … (it) relates to the recruitment and placement of seafarers’), and
• seek to prescribe specifications related to various aspects of the construction and equipping of:
  • fishing vessels 24 metres in length and over, and
  • fishing vessels less than 24 meters in length.

Once finalised and in force, the regulations will repeal and replace several sets gazetted between 1961 and 2000.

• draft regulations
• Government Gazette notice
• 2007 ILO convention

Published by SA Legal Academy Policy Watch

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