By Matthew Xuereb, The Times of Malta.
Malta, 2 February 2014:
Virtu Ferries Ltd of Ta’ Xbiex, Malta, is claiming almost €800,000 from the . . .[restrict]US government and its embassy in Malta over the evacuation of personnel at the height of the Libyan crisis in 2011.
The claim is not for the actual trip, which has already been paid for, but for the time spent waiting in Tripoli to load the passengers.
In a suit filed in the First Hall of Malta’s Civil Court, the company claimed that the catamaran chartered by the US Embassy to operate the trip – the MV Maria Dolores – exceeded the time agreed in advance for the dis/embarkation of passengers by 46 hours.
The company said that it was contacted by the former US Ambassador, Douglas Kmiec, to charter a vessel to evacuate 500 to 550 people from Libya.
The matter was urgent as the situation in the country was worsening by the minute.
The agreement struck on 21 February laid down that the Maria Dolores should leave Malta the following day to arrive in Libya on 23 February.
It was delayed on orders by the US State Department to enable US representatives to go to Libya on the outbound voyage.
It had been agreed that passengers would board at 10am on 23 February but as the vessel began making its way into the Tripoli port, the Libyan authorities ordered it to leave and only allowed it into Libyan territorial waters at 12.20pm.
The vessel berthed at 1pm but the charterers only gave the green light for passengers to start embarking at 3.30pm.
The process was slow and, by 7pm, only 150 of the 500-550 passengers had boarded.
Embarkation continued at an extremely slow pace throughout 24 February and the morning of 25 February, when the catamaran left at 1.37pm, arriving in Malta just before 9pm.
As a result, the charterer exceeded the agreed six-hour period to load and unload passengers, known as laytime, by 46 hours.
In the maritime industry, once this laytime elapses, the charterer would incur charges, technically known as demurrage, which is the period when the charterer remains in possession of the vessel in question after the period agreed upon. It is a form of liquidated damages for breaching the contracted laytime.
Virtu Ferries said that since the charterers had exceeded the laytime by 46 hours, the demurrage due amounted to €782,000.
From The Times of Malta with permission [/restrict]
