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Cebuano-owned shipping company, Cokaliong Shipping Lines Inc. is the first shipping company in the Philippines to use a state-of-the-art computerized engine monitoring system.
Shiro Kinugasa of Kunimori Engineering Works Co., Ltd.?s Manila branch, which is installing the technology, said the MV Filipinas Cebu is also the only passenger vessel in the country equipped with this sytem.
Kinugasa, who flew in from Manila, is being assisted by two experts from Niigata, a Japanese company contracted by Kunimori.
Toshikazu Matsumoto and Naoki Kurihara are setting up the system and will brief the chief engineer and crewmen of the MV Filipinas Cebu on Nov. 1 and 2.
?They arrived last October 25 and will be leaving on Nov. 3 after setting up the whole system and walking us through all the functions,? said Chester Cokaliong, chief executive officer of Cokaliong Shipping Lines Incorporated.
?Other shipping companies usually check everything manually while this system provides a printed report and will give an alarm when something is wrong , and give accurate information about where the problem is.?.
Chief engineer Galileo Mayola agreed, saying it is very useful for the crew because the system gives data automatically.
?If we want to have a reading of the exhaust, we don't need to go out of the control room and get the reading manually. Everything is here,? Cokaliong said.
The system was ordered in January this year but the whole system was delivered eight months for a total of of Y15,600,000 or about P8 million.
Cokalong said he considers this a wise investment.
Cokaliong Shipping Lines Inc. has a fleet of eight passenger vessels, including MV Filipinas Cebu.
Its other vessels are the MV Filipinas Maasin, MV Filipinas Surigao, MV Filipinas Dumaguete, MV Filipinas Dinagat, MV Filipinas Iloilo, MV Filipinas Dapitan, and MV Filipinas Ozamis.
Cokaliong said the MV Filipinas Cebu would be fe-rrying passengers to Iloilo and Palompon again by mid-November.
?At the moment it's MV Filipinas Dinagat that's travelling those routes. Once MV Filipinas Cebu resumes its travel, MV Filipinas Dinagat will then be traveling the new route in Calbayog, Western Samar in Leyte.?
Cokaliong said he wanted to install the same system in the other vessels but couldn?t because of design limitations of the other ships.
The MV Filipinas Cebu is ? the only ship with the system and it cost P220 million when I bought it.?
The other vessels still maintain the same standards and are equipped with a dedicated control room, said Cokaliong.
The new technology contributed to the firm?s winning the Vessel of the Year in the first MARINA Awards for Safe Travel, Excellence and Responsible Service (Masters) Award in Central Visayas.
The shipping company also won Coastwise Domestic Shipping Company and Best Ship Master award given to Master Mariner Saviniano E. Fuderanan of MV Filipinas Cebu.
