No Y2K worries in busy Malacca strait

No Y2K worries in busy Malacca strait

KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters): It will be business as usual on Dec. 31 in the Strait of Malacca, one of the world's busiest waterways, with no entry restrictions on vessels, a Malaysian maritime official said on Wednesday.

A new Vessel Traffic Separation (VTS) system for the strait, put in place by Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore in recent years, has assured maritime regulators of the safety of the waterway despite fears of the millennium bug, the official said.

"We won't stop any ships from coming into the strait come December 31," Mohamad Hashim, a supervisor with the Malaysian Maritime Rescue and Coordination Center (MRCC), told Reuters by telephone.

"All we ask is that the ships that come in have navigation systems which are Y2K compliant."

Hashim said the Malaysian MRCC, an unit of the Malaysian Maritime Department, had its own contingency plan for the Y2K or millennium bug, and would run this for a week between and after the New Year.

"We have upgraded our VTS system to fit Y2K requirements and will be monitoring it daily between December 27 and January 4," he said.

The Y2K bug refers to problems some computer systems may have when the year 2000 starts since they were programmed to read only the last two digits of a date and could mistake 2000 for 1900.

The Strait of Malacca, separating Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore, is a strategic route for oil tankers plying between the Middle East and North Asia, with more than 600 ships entering the waters daily at one time.

In the early 1990s, the narrow waterway proved hazardous to vessels in the absence of a proper traffic separation system, and many collisions were reported. Pirates also roamed the waters, making it more perilous.

The introduction of the VTS in the late 1990s has almost eliminated accidents in the waterway. "It is virtually like a highway, separating ships into different lanes like cars," Hashim said of the system.

But pirate attacks have continued unabated, and fewer ships enter the strait these days.