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JAPAN
shipping firms are pushing the country to reform some of
its current systems on seafarers, from education to
licensing, after fleet owners announced their preference
for the Philippines to supply the crew for almost all of
its newly built vessels.
According to estimates,
Japan
would need at least 10,000 Filipino seafarers from the
total demand of about 12,000 between now and 2010.
“Japanese owners want Filipinos to man 80 percent of
their new vessels,” said Eduardo U. Manese, president of
Philippine Japan Consultative Council (PJMCC), on
Wednesday.
As
of-end 2006, there are about 2,223 Japanese-owned
merchant fleet.
Japan
firms, however, are increasing their fleet to close to
3,000 vessels by the end of 2010 and then to 4,000 by
the end of 2015.
Published plans of major companies in Japan showed that
NYK Lines wants to increase its fleet from the current
787 vessels to 938 by 2010, Mitsui OSK Lines follows
from 803 ships to 1,200 by 2013, and K-Line from 468 to
700 by middle of 2010.
There
are about 30,000 seafarers, both in their ratings and
officer levels, onboard Japanese vessels at any given
time. Filipinos form the single biggest nationality.
During
the last few months,
Japan
fleet owners, through their local organization based in
Manila,
are changing the way the domestic shipping industry and
the government’s system of educating and licensing
seafarers.
Manese
said that it was PJMCC’s initiative to conduct an
assessment exam among the second-year students of BS
Maritime Transportation or BS Maritime Engineering, a
measure that would encourage those weak ones to shift to
other courses rather than continue and not be
accommodated by the industry’s standards.
“We have
already started it last year. And hopefully, we can
continue it in the coming years,” Manese said.
“We’re
not trying to kill the [maritime] school. We’re just
saying that they can shift to other courses such as
other service-related fields,” he said, adding that all
initiatives now are to create would-be officers from the
current pool of students.
Manese
said Japanese shipping firms are just giving a small
investment for the country’s seafaring sector, but would
reap dividends in return.
PJMCC
has also managed to convince its Japanese principals to
donate at least P20 million in order to start the
Professional Regulation Commission’s (PRC) long-delayed
walk-in examination system for seafarers at least in the
Visayas and Mindanao area.
That
amount accounts for all the equipment that will be used
in the conduct of the new licensing systems in
Cebu, Iloilo and
Davao. This means the PRC would only have to provide the
proper network and the space to hold the examinations.
Shipping
firms also put up their own training centers in the
country, such as the NYK-TDG Maritime Academy, and its
expensive simulators, such as the chemical and product
tanker simulator project.
PJMCC is
a nonstock, nonprofit organization composed of manning
agencies that provide seafarers to Japanese-owned,
-operated or -chartered vessels that are covered by a
collective bargaining agreement between the All Japan
Seamen’s Union and the Associated Marine Officers and
Seamen’s Union of the Philippines.
Japan
suffered a scarcity of seafarers for oceangoing vessels
as a result of its aging population. From a peak of
56,833 in 1974, it reached an all- time low of 2,625
crew in 2005, or just the same figure that the world’s
most populous countries, China and India, can provide.
China
has been giving the Philippines stern competition in the
supply of seafarers. However, Japan-China relations have
been strained since before the Second World War up to
the “flag incident” in Nagasaki in 1958.
Still,
Japan has been China’s largest trade partner for eight
years in a row up to 2001, while China became Japan’s
second-largest trade partner after the
United States. |
