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A GROUP
of Japanese crewing managers gave the Philippine
Regulation Commission a substantial amount worth of
equipment in order to start its walk-in examination for
seafarers, a long-delayed move to speed up the
licensing.
Eduardo
U. Manese, current president of Philippine Japan Manning
Consultative Council, told reporters on Wednesday that
his group has given the government at least P20 million
worth of equipment that will be deployed by the PRC in
its walk-in examination systems in
Davao,
Iloilo
and Cebu.
Manese,
who is also chairman of Magsaysay Maritime Corp., the
country’s largest domestic manning group, said the
amount covers all of the equipment and facilities needed
for the system to run in the said areas.
The
facilities include 130 computer terminals, individual
cubicles, security doors, chairs and air conditioning
units.
When
finished, the PRC’s
Cebu testing
center can accommodate up to 40 examinees, 50 for Iloilo
and 30 for Davao.
“We will
turn over the systems [to PRC] by December 17 or 19 and
they promised us that the system will be up and running
by January,” Manese said.
“There
is no string attached in our donation. We just want to
have the system running.”
In April
last year, the PRC launched the Licensure Examination
and Registration Information System (Leris) that aims,
among others, to modernize the agency’s services and cut
long queues in its main testing office in Manila.
More
than a year since the launch, some industry leaders
expressed dissatisfaction on PRC’s Leris due to its
limitations.
PRC’s
Manila testing center can only accommodate 40 persons
per examination, conduced twice a week. A seafarers’
labor group has put up its own testing facility to
augment the need.
The rest
who either want to renew or take a new license are being
scheduled on the traditional manual testing, which is
only conducted twice or thrice a year.
The
country is one of the top suppliers of seafarers in the
world, but many international shipping companies are
exerting pressure on the country’s manning agencies and
the government to create more officers.
According to government figures, the country deployed
247,707 seafarers in 2005, or a quarter of the average
annual overseas Filipino deployment of the country.
A study
from the Warwick Institute for Employment Research in
2005 said there is a shortage of about 10,000 to 15,000
maritime officials, or about two percent of the entire
global workforce, between now and 2015.
This was
a result of strong demand from the industry due to the
increase of larger vessels that needed more crew members
and the early retirement of officers from the
traditional top source of officers such as North
American countries, Western Europe and Japan. |
