The Security Association for the Maritime Industry (SAMI) has announced the first companies to pass through the initial stage of SAMI’s international private maritime security company (PMSC) accreditation. SAMI has created a standard and mechanism to accredit companies within the global membership, and the three companies which volunteered to act as a pilot group have now been confirmed as successful.
The three are Miris International, Securewest International and Spirit Security Services. Each company underwent a due diligence check during stage one.
The checks applied to a range of areas of the company’s operations, to ensure compliance with a range of minimum standards. The checks are 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 today been announced as having successfully passed Stage 1 of the accreditation are to be congratulated and represent the vanguard of the maritime security industry.” SAMI is in the process of accrediting another tranche of companies and we expect to have performed due diligence checks on over 30 per cent of our 150 global PMSCs within the next few months.”
The programme has been developed to provide systematic and strict checks on private maritime security companies. The process is broken into three separate stages. Stage one is the due diligence check, stage two involves a site visit to the company headquarters to audit the systems in place, and stage three is an operational assessment of company personnel deployed onto ships. The aim,s to provide ship owners with reassurance they need when contracting with a security provider.
The SAMI membership is made up of over 150 international maritime security providers from over 30 nations. For a full list of SAMI members and more information about the Association and its work visit: www.seasecurity.org.
