The Indian Coast Guard (ICG) organised the 18th National Maritime Search and Rescue Board (NMSARB) meeting in New Delhi on December 18, 2019 to discuss policy issues, formulate guidelines & procedures and assess the efficacy of National Search and Rescue Plan.
The apex-level meeting was chaired by Director General Indian Coast Guard and Chairman NMSARB Shri K Natarajan and attended by 48 Board members from various ministries, agencies, all Coastal States & Union Territories. For the first time, three strong components of the M-SAR – Secretary (Ministry of Shipping), Secretary (Ministry of Civil Aviation) and Secretary (Department of Fisheries) participated in the annual meeting.
SAR architecture
The Chairman advocated the need for collaborative approach with capacity building of stakeholders towards strengthening the maritime SAR architecture. He reiterated the need to focus on sustainable maritime safety in Area of Responsibility (AOR) and address regulations governing mandatory carriage of life saving safety equipment, seaworthiness of fishing vessels by fisher-folk as preventive mechanism, proper training and accounting of the crew onboard.
Indian Coast Guard rescued 9,672 lives
Indian Coast Guard being the nodal agency for Maritime Search and Rescue has rescued 9,672 lives by coordinating 3,180 search and rescue missions, which inter alia includes 2,479 air sorties and 3,540 ship deployments, since inception. ICG thus saves one precious life every second day.
Further, ICG also escorted more than 6,000 fishing boats to safe locations during the passage of three severe cyclonic storms this year. In this year alone, ICG took 300 SAR missions involving rescue of close to 1,000 lives at sea which includes 27 MEDEVAC operations and some of the rescue operations were conducted at the fringes of Indian Search and Rescue Region.
