Section 389: Carriage of grain

389. Carriage of grain.—(1) Where grain is loaded on board any Pakistani ship or is loaded on board any ship within any port or place in Pakistan, all necessary and reasonable precautions shall be taken to prevent the grain from shifting; and if such precautions are not taken, the owner or the master of the ship or any agent of the owner who was charged with the loading or with sending the ship to sea laden with grain, shall be liable to a fine which may extend to one hundred thousand rupees and the ship shall be deemed for the purposes of this Part to be unsafe by reason of improper loading. (2) Where any ship which is loaded with grain outside Pakistan without all necessary and reasonable precautions having been taken to prevent the grain from shifting, enters any port or place in Pakistan so laden, the owner or the master of the ship shall be liable to a fine which may extend to one hundred thousand rupees and the ship shall be deemed for the purposes of this Part to be unsafe by reason of importer loading. (3) Where grain is loaded on board a Pakistani ship in accordance with a grain loading plan approved under section 388 or where grain is loaded on board any other ship in accordance with a grain loading plan approved by or on behalf of the Government of the country in which that ship is registered, the ship shall be deemed, for the purposes of sub-sections (1) and (2), to have been loaded with all necessary and reasonable precautions. (4) On the arrival at a port or place in Pakistan from a port or place outside Pakistan of any ship carrying a cargo of grain, the master shall cause to be delivered at the office of the Principal Officer or to such other officer as may be specified by the Federal Government in this behalf, a notice stating,— (a) the draught of water and free board of the said ship after the loading of the cargo was completed at the final port of loading; (b) the kind of grain carried and quantity thereof stated in cubic meters, cubic feet, quarters, bushels or tons weight; and (c) the mode in which the grain is stowed and the precautions taken to prevent the grain from shifting and where the grain has been stowed in accordance with the ships’ grain loading plan, if any, that it has been so stowed. (5) If the master fails to deliver the notice required by sub-section (4), or if on any such notice makes any statement that he knows to be false in a material particular, or recklessly makes a statement that is false in a material particular, he shall be liable to a fine which may extend to ten thousand rupees. (6) A surveyor or any other person authorised in this behalf, by general or special order of the Federal Government, may for securing the observance of the provisions of this section inspect a ship carrying a cargo of grain and the mode in which such cargo is stowed therein and require the production of the grain loading plan of the ship. (7) The Federal Government may, by notification in the official Gazette, make rules prescribing in relation to grain loading plans and the loading of ships generally or of ships of any class specifying the precautions to be taken, and when such precautions have been prescribed, they shall be treated for the purposes of this section to be included in the expression “necessary and reasonable precautions”. (8) In this section and section 388 the expression “grain” includes wheat, maize (corn), oats, rye, barley, rice, pulses and seeds, and processed form thereof, and the expression “ship carrying a cargo of grain” means a ship carrying a quantity of grain exceeding one-third of the ship’s registered tonnage reckoning two tones by weight of grain as equivalent to one unit of registered tonnage, or where the height of grain carried in any compartment exceeds one-third of the height of that compartment.

Effective date: 2001-01-01

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