With so much uncertainty dogging the world
of private maritime security it is a relief to see that the Security
Association for the Maritime Industry (SAMI) has announced the first
companies to successfully pass through the initial stage of their
international accreditation programme.
The three companies are Miris International, Securewest
International and Spirit Security Services. Each company underwent a
stringent due diligence check during Stage 1 of the SAMI programme.
The checks applied to a range of different areas of the company’s
operations, to ensure compliance with a range of minimum standards, and
are broadly in line with guidelines issued by the International Maritime
Organization (IMO) and ensure that legal, compliance and quality issues
have been adequately addressed.
Peter Cook, Director of SAMI said, “We have been developing the
SAMI standard over the past year and so we thank our international
membership for their vital input. The three companies which have been
announced as having successfully passed Stage 1 of the accreditation are
to be congratulated and represent the vanguard of the maritime security
industry.”
He added, “SAMI is currently in the process of accrediting another
tranche of companies and we expect to have performed due diligence
checks on over 30% of our 150 global PMSCs within the next few months.”
The SAMI programme has been developed to provide systematic and
strict checks on private maritime security companies. The process is
broken into three separate stages. Stage 1 is a due diligence check,
Stage 2 involves a site visit to the company headquarters to audit the
systems in place, and Stage 3 is an operational assessment of company
personnel deployed onto ships.
SAMI claims that their accreditation programme builds to provide
the most robust and rigorous of checks, so as to provide shipowners with
the reassurance they need when contracting with a security provider.
http://www.shiptalk.com/
