The Port Unit and Safe Navigation
The harbour unit is responsible for ensuring safe navigation within the waters of a seaport. Its duties include creating appropriate conditions for pilotage operations to be conducted safely, carrying out measures under the approved plan for the removal of sunken property, organising search and rescue operations to save persons and vessels in danger, and mobilising all resources within the harbour unit for eliminating emergency spills of oil and hazardous substances.
The harbour unit also ensures that the storage of dangerous cargo and cargo handling operations are carried out in the prescribed manner. In performing these functions it must observe Georgia's international treaties, the Maritime Code, other legislative and sub-legislative normative acts, the applicable technical regulations, the port rules and the written requirements of the Agency — so that order in the port rests on a single legal foundation rather than on ad hoc decisions.
Clearance to Depart and Detention of a Ship
Every ship, regardless of the state of its flag and the form of ownership, must obtain written consent to depart from the state supervision and control service of the seaport before leaving the port. The captain of the port, in turn, has the right to detain a ship or cargo where the ship is unseaworthy, where port structures, other property in the port or navigation equipment are out of service, or where loading, supply and crewing requirements are violated and other deficiencies endanger safe navigation, the health of persons on board or the environment.
Detention is also justified where the ship's documents are improperly compiled, where a claim exists concerning general average, salvage, a carriage contract, collision, unpaid tax or other damage, or where the owner of the ship or cargo fails to provide appropriate security. An order of the port captain on detention operates for 3 days and nights, excluding rest days and holidays established by Georgian legislation; if the court does not deliver a decision within that period, the ship or cargo is released immediately. A ship owned by another state and used for non-commercial purposes may not be detained, except in the cases provided for by Georgia's international treaties and legislation.