The Maritime Safety Authority of Fiji (MSAF) has formally established a four-member Maritime Appeals Tribunal to hear challenges to agency decisions affecting shipowners, operators and seafarers, the authority says in a maritime notice. The tribunal was set up under Section 62 of the Maritime Transport Act 2013, and the appointments of its members were effective from January 26, 2023 for three-year terms.
Under Section 68 of the Maritime Transport Act, the tribunal will accept appeals against a range of MSAF decisions, including matters relating to the registration of ships, survey certification of vessels, and the certification of seafarers where certificates have been suspended for longer than six months or cancelled. The tribunal’s jurisdiction also covers items expressly identified in the Maritime Transport Act and the Ship Registration Act 2013, giving those aggrieved by MSAF administrative actions a statutory route for review.
MSAF’s notice sets out the initial procedural requirements for lodging an appeal. Appeals must be instituted by a formal letter addressed to the secretariat of the Maritime Appeals Tribunal. Each appeal letter must specify the name of the person appealing, include the MSAF letter that notified the appellant of the decision being challenged, and provide a formal address of service where the tribunal secretariat can dispatch all correspondence related to the appeal.
The authority said clauses 4 and 5 of its notice — the requirements to identify the appellant and supply the MSAF decision letter plus a service address — must be satisfied “until such time the Tribunal issues specific procedural instructions for logging appeals with the secretariat.” In other words, while the tribunal is now in place, more detailed filing and hearing procedures are expected to follow once the tribunal issues its own directions.
The establishment of the Maritime Appeals Tribunal creates a dedicated independent mechanism for contesting key regulatory decisions by MSAF. For seafarers facing lengthy suspensions or cancellation of certification, and for owners or registrants disputing survey or registration rulings, the tribunal now offers a formal avenue for redress beyond internal review. By law the tribunal operates separately from MSAF, aiming to provide an impartial forum for adjudication of technical and administrative maritime disputes.
With the appointment date recorded as January 26, 2023 and a three-year term stipulated for tribunal members, those initial appointments would run until January 25, 2026. Mariners, ship registrants and maritime legal advisers are being urged to follow the notice’s requirements when preparing appeals and to watch for the tribunal’s forthcoming procedural directions, which will set out how appeals are to be logged and processed in practice.
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