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PHILIPPINE-BASED Maritime Academy of Asia and the
Pacific (MAAP) said it would spend P400 million to
expand its campus in Bataan, north of Manila, on
speculation the global shortage in maritime officers
will continue for the next decade.
MAAP,
one of the emerging educational institutions owned by a
seafarers’ labor group, has already spent part of that
budget to acquire a 53-hectare lot in that central
Philippine province.
Construction is also going on, the school’s chairman
Gregorio Oca said in an interview last week.
Oca is
also the chairman of the Associated Marine Officers’ and
Seamen’s Union of the Philippines (Amosup).
A
portion of the amount came from loans, while the others
came from its Japanese principals and from the cash flow
of both MAAP and Amosup, MAAP president Eduardo Ma. R.
Santos said from
Bataan in a
telephone interview Monday.
“The
money came from various sources but not from MAAP
because we just work on a budget,” Santos said.
The
expansion will more than double the school’s graduate
output from the current 130 to 450 by 2012, he said. The
school accepts about 250 students per year.
Amosup
owns the school, while MAAP’s board is composed of
mainly industry stakeholders based both here and abroad.
MAAP’s
expansion has long been asked for by its shareholders
since it claims to produce the industry’s best seafarers
that can later on become officers.
According to an Amosup official, the bulk of the
students currently studying BS Maritime Transportation
or BS Marine Engineering or a hybrid of both are already
being paid for by the Japanese principals.
This
left only a handful of students that can be accommodated
from other ship-owning countries such as those from
European nations.
All of
the students of MAAP are scholars of various
international shipping firms, and its curriculum is
tailor-fitted to the needs of their principals.
Such
strategy gives the school enough financial muscle to
invest in the latest training equipment and other
learning facilities, rather than charging high tuition
from its students. It also has more chances to create
more maritime officers since the cadets are being
groomed to become one from the first day they enter the
college, and the principals can determine the
performance of its scholars on a regular basis.
The
International Maritime Employers Committee (IMEC), which
has a board seat in MAAP, is expected to benefit most
from the school expansion as they can send their
students there rather than to other schools in the
Visayas such as the University of Cebu.
“We have
decided to support them starting 2009 [the expected date
of completion of the expanded MAAP]. We could’ve gone to
other schools in the Visayas if they have not expanded,”
said Ian C. Sherwood, IMEC president and managing
director of United Kingdom-based Delta Marine Personnel
Services Ltd., in a separate interview.
Sherwood
was in Manila last week for a manning conference.
MAAP
boasts of its 98-percent passing rate in the licensure
examination, one of the highest compared with other top
schools such as Philippine Merchant Marine Academy.
According to data from the Commission on Higher
Education (Ched), there were 79,843 maritime students
that enrolled during school year 2003-04.
Out of
these graduates, however, only 20 percent had made it to
working onboard oceangoing vessels as a result of the
school’s weak competitiveness brought about by, among
others, their school’s inability to provide training
equipment and hire quality teachers, industry sources
said.
There
are 55 schools all over the country that offer BS Marine
Transportation courses and 50 for Marine Engineering
programs compliant with the Standards of Training,
Certification and Watch- keeping for Seafarers
requirements, according to Ched’s data. |
