National Refresher Course on the Oil Spill Response technics used under the project POSOW – Feb 22, 2019

    National Refresher Course on the Oil Spill Response technics used under the project POSOW

    During an oil spill event, national authorities often need the assistance of trained volunteers to respond rapidly and efficiently to a marine pollution on coastal areas not only to intervene for the shoreline clean-up but also to rescue oiled wildlife. In this context, the EU-funded project Preparedness for Oil-polluted Shoreline clean-up and Oiled Wildlife interventions (POSOW) trained over 430 volunteers in 16 different Mediterranean countries since 2012 through the successive projects POSOW I and POSOW II (2012-2013 & 2015-2016). These volunteers have benefited from the required knowledge and experience to be registered in the POSOW Volunteer database which is a Mediterranean regional network enabling the volunteers to collaborate with national authorities if they request assistance.

    Within the continuous effort aiming at improving national capacities in these fields, a National Refresher Course was organised in Malta from 22 to 23 February 2019 by two local non-governmental organisations Nature Trust Malta (NTM) and BirdLife Malta with the participation of Transport Malta and the Civil Protection Department of Malta (CPD) and with the support of The Regional Marine Pollution Emergency Response Centre for the Mediterranean Sea (REMPEC). This initiative occurred 5 years after the organisation of a National Training Course held in Malta within the framework of POSOW I with the collaboration of NTM and CPD.

    REMPEC was pleased to participate as facilitator of this two-day Refresher Course to present the overall project and its outcomes to 25 volunteers to ensure the sustainability of the initial project by capitalising knowledge and national capacities developed during its original implementation. Six speakers from the different organisations involved in the training and REMPEC introduced the volunteers to various topics such as the shoreline assessment, the shoreline clean-up, the oiled wildlife response and the management of volunteers on site with the notion of chain of command.

    Read more about POSOW project and its outputs on www.posow.org.