When he was appointed Acting Executive Director of the Sierra Leone Maritime Administration (SLMA) in April 2013, he inherited an administration not fully capacitated since its establishment in 2000. SLMA could not match the speed of organisations that were even established after its formation. Upon assumption of duties last year, Alhaji Wurroh Jalloh has turned around the image of SLMA, with huge organogram, to match the speed with similar orgainsations. This has resulted in sanity of the Maritime Industry in the country. He spoke to ABUBAKAR HASHIM on topical issues in Maritime Administration.
Since your assumption of duties, what have been your achievements and challenges?
I met an administration that was not fully capacitated to carry out its mandate. We have 17 functions which we are tasked to carry out, which centre around maritime safety, security and the environment. We first developed our organogram to reflect the true maritime administration, as recommended by the International Maritime Orgainsation (IMO) in the United Kingdom. Our office was opened in the year 2000, but we could not match up to the speed with other orgainsations that were established after us.
What I first did was to get an organogram. This required human resources to fill in positions. Maritime is all about legislation. International conventions should match up with domestics legislations. Vessels should comply with international laws. We now have the capacity to execute such functions as we have beefed up our personnel in terms of training. We are now positioned to meet international standards.
In terms of our inland waterways, we have done a great lot. We have maritime traffic regulators all over the country. We have been doing some training for our local boat operators. Maritime distress situations and operational timings of our local boats here are paramount. We have radio stations across the country for distress calls and boats are not allowed to operate in the country after 7pm. We also have volunteers all over the country to assist in search and rescue operations. Accidents are now minimised due to our existing efforts.
This is how we coordinate with both local and international vessels. We also provide life jackets to boat operators, to minimise casualties at seas. We now record less casualties in our inland waterways, as we have also embarked on training of our local boat operators.
You mentioned earlier that when you came into office, things were not up to speed. Activities had derailed. What were the compelling reasons behind such a setback?
I have been trained as a maritime expert. I had been in maritime administration 10 years before I was appointed as the CEO. Honestly, things did not go well. I first mentioned the area of capacity. This office had only 30 staff, now we have 162, both field and office staff. So we got the organogram reflective of a maritime administration and filled in the respective positions. We now have 5 departments: the shipping, safety, legal, the registration, coupled with individual units. We are involved in maritime safety and security of our maritime environment. We now have respective units to cater for corresponding activities. Before, these were centered on one-man activity, which impeded timely action and dispensation. We now have a good standing in Maritime administration.
Another area of challenge when I took over was that we had been lagging behind in our contributions. That is behind us now. We now pay our contributions to international bodies and we benefit immensely from them in terms of training of our personnel. About 80 per cent of the personnel at the IMO are my colleagues. We have that interaction. As I said earlier, we have 17 functions and these are related to safety navigations. Maritime pollution is another big challenge we are facing. A lot of debris are out at sea, especially for our local boats.
We are tackling the problem with our Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Civil Societies. I was recently in the US for the London Convention for the dumping of waste in the sea. Maritime Administration does not only limit pollution emanating from the sea, but also from the land. So we have done relatively well in Maritime safety and security and in our international obligations.
This leads to a follow-up question, your international relationship. SLMA does not exist in isolation. What has been your relationship with outside bodies, particularly the ECOWAS countries?
As you rightly said, we cannot work in isolation. The sea is all over us. So does maritime. All what we do here is international. All conventions are the same all over the world. Ships are inspected according to international standards. We have coast guards across the west coast and we assist each other in this area. So we work together. We have the maritime organisations for West and Central Africa. We also have the Abuja Secretariat, that coordinates activities in West Africa. We also have the Maritime University in Ghana. I’m the Chairman of the Technical Committee and my Minister is the Chairman of the Board. We have five countries in this university.
Sierra Leone now stands tall in the area of collaboration with international bodies. This is plus to us.
How do you see the immediate future of the Sierra Leone Maritime Administration?
It was not by mistake the President appointed me to this position. With the length of stay I’ve spent in this orgainsation and since I took up office, we’ve had about five missions and these are my colleagues. I want to leave behind a legacy. I resume at 7 a.m. daily. We’ve embarked on a lot of activities, tailored along desired goals. So the future is very bright and promising.