|
AN
International group of ship managers has tapped with a
local manning group to attract more Filipinos into the
seafaring career, as the industry worldwide suffers from
lack of officers and a bloated rank and file.
In a
media conference last week, , International Shipmanagers’
Association (InterManager) president Ole B. Stene said
the partnership with the Filipino Association for
Mariners’ Employment Inc. (Famei) is also a move to
become “visible” in the Philippines.
Stene,
who is also the managing director of Abotiz-Jebsen Bulk
Transport Corp., a joint venture of the Aboitiz family
and Norway’s Jebsen group, said they want to uplift the
image of seafaring, such as the poor conditions they
face at seas, in order to entice more students to enroll
in the profession.
Stene,
however, said they still have no idea on how they can
both uplift the image of seafaring as a career and
recruit more competent students to become seaman that
can go on to become an officer.
InterManager was not the first to make its presence felt
in the country in a move to push both the government and
the private sector to move together to help solve the
global shortage of maritime officers as a result of
increasing fleet.
About
the same time last year, shortly after a manning
convention in Manila, International Maritime Employers
Committee Ltd. (Imec) also said they wanted to be active
in the maritime circles and be vocal about its stand on
the issue.
At
first, it was not clear on its plan, but a year later,
the group had struck a new collective bargaining
agreement with a labor group Associated Marine Officers
and Seaman’s Union of the Philippines (Amosup). The deal
involves a “significant” increase in the salary of the
Filipino seafarers on one hand, but would compel the
Amosup to raise its efforts to train more would-be
officers.
Imec
also wanted to remove all the stumbling blocks in its
path such as the frivolous suits filed by the seafarers
against its employers.
InterManager, on the other hand, said that it still has
no clear path on where it will be going in the next few
months, or there will be new funding for Famei as a
result of the partnership. Stene said that for starters
they wanted to recruit more Filipino manning agencies to
become its member and wanted to cleanse the image of the
seafaring career in the media.
InterManager was established in 1991 and represents ship
managers worldwide controlling a fleet of over 1,000
ships. It has more than 50 full and associate members in
its roster, including Aboitiz-Jebsen, which only joined
last year.
Famei,
on the other hand, has 98 members, supplying about 65
percent of the 225,000 annual deployment. All of its
members belong to the total of 346 licensed manning
agencies accredited by the Philippine Overseas
Employment Administration.
The
interest of many Europeans to become a seafarer have
declined after many shipowners decided to replace
Western junior officers with those from the Far East
some two decades ago, in a move to increase profits, and
reduce losses.
According to the paper of Andreas Droussiotis, chief
executive officer of Hanseatic Shipping Co. Ltd.,
presented during the 8th Asia- Pacific Manning and
Training Conference, owners wanted to replace the
European crew members in order to save costs as overhead
for the ship’s crew accounts for about 60 percent of the
total operational outlay.
“What
was the direct result of this? Once newcomers in Europe
realized this, their interest in studying the profession
of seafarer, be it deck or engine, diminished to the
extent that very few candidates were enrolled in the
maritime academies,” he said. |
