Japan Ministry Of Transport News

Hiroaki Sakashita has been appointed as President & CEO as well as a Representative Director of classification society ClassNK, effective March 18, 2020. Current Senior Executive Vice Presidents Tetsuya Kinoshita, Junichiro Iida, and Dr. Toshiyuki Shigemi will continue in their present roles on the team, joined by Hirofumi Takano and Taira Narisawa as Executive Vice President.Koichi Fujiwara has been appointed as Chairman of the Board of Directors, leaving the post of Representative Director, President & CEO.

The S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) and the Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore (MPA) have appointed former Secretary-General of the International Maritime Organization (IMO), Koji Sekimizu, as a RSIS-MPA Distinguished Visiting Fellow for a period of two years commencing on 1 May 2016. The fellowship was established by RSIS and MPA to engage eminent maritime personalities with specialised knowledge, expertise and international experience. Koji Sekimizu, a naval architect by training, began his career as a ship inspector with Japan’s Ministry of Transport and joined the IMO as Technical Officer in the Sub-Division for Technology, Maritime Safety Division in 1989.

More than a decade after the U.S. enacted OPA '90, much to the consternation of the vessel design and owning community, the International Maritime Organization (IMO) has taken the first formal step towards a global phase-out of single hull tankers. The similarities between the action taken by the U.S. — action that was roundly panned outside of the States due to the fact that it was not undertaken under the auspices of the international community — and the recent action at IMO are uncannily familiar; both actions coming in the wake of a high-profile oil spill disaster. The action at IMO was pushed forward vigilantly by the European Union in a determined effort to ensure that accidents such as the Erika…