SUMMARY OF THE OPENING CEREMONY OF THE PMAWCA HARBOUR MASTERS AND PFSO MEETING
As part of PMAWCA activities, the 6th Harbour Masters Network and PFSOs meeting was held at the Hotel Boulevard in Libreville, Gabon. The meeting will hold from the 8th – 10th of January 2020.
The opening ceremony witnessed welcome speeches from the Managing Director of Office des Ports etRades du Gabon (OPRAG), the Chairman of the Network and the Secretary-General.
Having been a founding member of the harbour masters network and the current 1st vice president of the association, the Managing Director used this opportunity to express his profound gratitude to members of the network and indicated the importance of using the Harbour Masters Network as a tool for PMAWCA. He wished everyone the best in this New Year 2020.
His speech was followed by that of the Chairman of the network who thanked the Government and the port of Gabon for accepting to host this meeting and urged his colleagues to have good discussions as proposed in the programme in order to forge a way forward and come up with methods of improvement on their collaboration, especially relevant recommendations for the attention of the port authorities and their Governments.
The last speech for the day was given by the Secretary-General who painted the sad picture of the piracy cases that happened in Benin, Togo, Gabon and Cameroun (Limbe), which unfortunately ended up with records of deaths. These unfortunate incidents happened towards the end of the year 2019.
He also expressed his gratitude majorly to the President of the Republic of Gabon, His Excellency EL Hadj ALI BONGO, for the legendary hospitality to all the delegates.
Due to the absence of the Minister for Transport and Infrastructure, the responsibility of declaring the meeting open fell on the Secretary-General who did the needful and wished the commandants and PFSOs fruitful deliberations during their meeting.
