A WEB page enabling workers to gain rapid access to essential information about their health and safety rights and responsibilities has been set up by the Health and Safety Executive.

The "workers’ webpage" http://www.hse.gov.uk/ workers
- covers the roles and responsibilities of employers and employees, as well as issues such as ‘whistle-blowing’ and reporting accidents.

THE secret of improving Filipino seafarers’ excellence and competitiveness in the world maritime labor market lies in educating and training those still in school and yet to be employed. 

Though still top in the list of countries supplying skilled workers on board ships of various flags and of actual manning the world’s bottom, the country stands to lose its position and competitive edge even before any move has been made to prove that the Filipino officer or rating is still very much qualified to get the job.

GOVERNMENT ROLE

In the renewed effort by conscientious mariners, government stands to play a big role in ensuring the quality of education and training that prospective seafarers get from their schools. For starters, a vigorous restatement of quality maritime education policy is expected from the country’s leadership, realizing that the billions of dollars in seafarers’ annual foreign exchange remittance is already a great contribution to the ailing economy.

Even if government subscribes to the reign of the free market forces, education and training cannot be treated like any service anymore that its cost of provision, fee, and standards of practice should be left alone to service producers and customers. It is because education (unlike a piece of paper called diploma) should not be considered an end product by itself—it is a means to a livelihood, one whose income has become very crucial to the country’s survival.

Henceforth, government through the principal and participation of the Commission on Higher Education should seriously monitor, report on, and prescribe high standards for the quality of maritime education and training beginning with clear and relevant understanding of the provisions of the IMO-STCW. Even entry standards for tertiary level maritime education—like language and mathematics skills considering their importance for the seafarers’ work and continuing education —should be looked into in order to conserve resources and lead to wise utilization of human resources.

BACHELOR’S DEGREE

Only 1,000 or so among about 25,000 maritime graduates each year from more than 70 maritime schools are hired as deck or engine cadets annually on board ships. Bachelor’s degree graduates should serve as cadets and that is the only reason why young students should get such a degree. They should keep off contracts as messboys, deckboys, etc. because they are supposed to have been trained to assume officer positions after they have been qualified by experience and licensure exam, among others. 

The large number of unemployed graduates hang around for any kind of job, but many serve as security guards, parking attendants, waiters, or even fishermen in some companies and their diplomas and certificates have become but useless pieces of paper in their plastic folders.

The mushrooming of maritime schools offering all sorts of courses, including bachelor’s degrees, after a supposed moratorium on the accreditation of new ones since 1986 has fanned wild dreams of employability, income, life of ease and adventure among the gullible poor rural and urban population. It has been worsened by the gaya-gaya culture in seafarer-rich communities and blown to pandemic proportion by government official’s culpability, neglect, ignorance, and complicity. 

Greed of course is what lurks in the shadows of the benighted Philippine maritime situation. Although it cannot be criminalized, its manifestation can be exposed, hoping that lesson learned here can make the run of affairs turn for the better.

FINANCIAL VIABILITY?

It could be lower than P12,000 tuition per student per semester. Filled by up to about 50 students per classroom, the school would have about P100,000 per room to cover expenses of teachers’ pay, rent, electricity, maintenance, etc. At this level, it is a losing proposition to own and run a school because there will be no money left to cover other expenses and taxes.

What then makes a school or its constituent financially viable? Certainly there must be other sources of money for other persons to get the idea that having a maritime school is good business proposition. One can mention income from school supplies, canteen operations, photocopying services, concessionaires, booksellers/dealers, school uniform (PE, ROTC, white duck) sellers, and perhaps interests imposed on installment mode payments in tuition.

In schools where students have to return to the school after their year-long fourth year shipboard experience to get their logbooks, a handsome P4,000 “fee” is collected nowadays per graduate. Such collection is imposed even if the school, considering that it owns no training ship, has nothing to do with students’ shipboard training.

Certainly some schools are paid directly by sponsoring foreign shipping companies or their agencies in Manila or are recipients of private donor agency,which funds.These schools can maintain as low as 3,000 enrolment but keep education quality higher than those in the national capital region.

It will be a foolish argument to have only the government run maritime schools because even now, leaders of the state-run maritime academy would like to have the school privatized. Chaos can expectedly explode as private schools are phased out because some of them can be good and financially viable schools at the same time.

A CAREER PATH

In Europe, a young man is told to work on board a ship first before he decides to enroll in a maritime course. The reason is obvious: he should not spend for education which he will be sorry for after realizing that his heart and mind are not into it. It should not however be argued that we cannot have the same system because we have few ships and we cannot allow untrained workers have anything to do with running a ship. A 16-year old in our better days of quality elementary and high school public education (which was not very long ago) could find jobs they had no degree or collegiate education for because they have been well qualified by the knowledge and skills from which apprenticeship training can take over. 

In many countries, seamanship is qualified by short, modular vocational training that students can take any time they please as their career depends on it. Nobody needs to have a college diploma to work as a messboy, cook, deckhand. The diploma is relevant only when one decides to have an officer and ship management track going to the level of master or chief engineer. It may interest the reader to note that at any time, only about 30 percent of those actually deployed abroad year in and year out signed on board as officers. Meaning all those constituting the remaining 70 percent, in the area of about 200,000 today, never really needed a diploma because they have been hired as ratings anyway.

OPERATIONAL AND MANAGEMENT LEVELS

If only 1,000 of about 25,000 graduates are bound to become officers while the rest end up with other jobs, at best ratings, these 21,000 should have studied only what is appropriate to their knowledge and skills. And even if they improved beyond the lower ratings category, their training requirements could have been actually provided by better schools offering continuing education in the residential (sit down) or distance (correspondence, internet-based virtual) mode.

Operational level courses are now prescribed under IMO Model courses 7.02, 7.03, 7.04 and 7.05 which can be taken within the first two years of the BSMT/BSMarE programs, without necessarily working for the degree right away. Those with aptitude and the desire to reach up to management level training, meanwhile, can be selectively encouraged to proceed to work for compliance with 7.01 requirement.

Graduates of the erstwhile Philippine nautical school realize that after first two years theoretical training (7.02-7.05) and a third year shipboard training, returning for the last and fourth year (7.01, management level) training had brought them closer to a better appreciation not only of the duties and responsibilities they are bound to face as officers but already prepare them to look forward to managerial responsibility as ship masters and first engineers. They see that this 2-1-1 scheme, given its full rationality and logic can best prepare seafarers for their jobs on board ships, but can most likely bring the number of qualified Filipinos with managerial competence much higher than today.

In time and with reason, we  must also realize that even if that day comes that all Filipino seafarers are well qualified, there will still be less ships available to man and manage than seafarers. 

MARINO:  HISTORY OF FILIPINO SEAMEN 
By Roli G. Talampas
Regional origin of Filipino seafarers

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