Category Archives: Manning, Training and Jobs

The British government’s drive to lower net migration by reducing the availability of Tier 2 visa certificates is already having an impact on a wide range of UK based shipping companies and maritime services providers, according to specialist shipping industry recruiter Faststream. On 19 July 2010, the UK Border and Immigration Agency introduced a temporary [...]

Seafarers still hang around Manila’s Rizal Park, more popularly known as Luneta. But the festive atmosphere is gone following the closure last month of the recruitment booths seen in this photo. Crewing agencies were ordered to vacate the booths and dismantle their corporate signboards because they were recruiting outside their office premises, an illegal act. [...]

We’ve had some doubts on the matter, and they were reinforced yesterday. A young man who’s due to join a cruise ship complained to us about he and others being required by their agency to undergo medical exams twice a year – one at the Department of Health and another at a private clinic. We’ve [...]

Last week we were in a pool hall in Manila playing 9-ball with our favourite old salt. At a table next to ours were a Korean couple in their 20s. The sight of them suddenly reminded us of how affluent South Korea has become, so affluent that its young citizens can go on pleasure trips [...]

It’s a dog-eat-dog world in Manila’s crowded maritime training sector, but COMPASS (Competent Maritime Professional And Sea Staff) Training Centre Inc has decided to plunge in anyway. Are we seeing yet another dog? Curious, we recently paid a visit to the newest training centre in town, located in a renovated four-storey building along Taft Avenue [...]

IMO BRIEFING: A Diplomatic Conference in Manila, meeting from 21st to 25th June to adopt major revisions to the STCW Convention and its associated Code, passed a resolution nominating 25th June of each year as the “Day of the Seafarer”. The date chosen was that on which the STCW revisions were adopted and acknowledges their [...]

IMO BRIEFING: The IMO Diplomatic Conference in Manila (21-25 June 2010) which adopted major revisions to the STCW Convention and Code has also agreed, by consensus, a series of new provisions on the issue of “fitness for duty – hours of rest” to provide watchkeeping officers aboard ships with sufficient rest periods. Under the Manila [...]

IMO BRIEFING: Major revisions to the International Convention on Standards of Training, Certification and Watchkeeping for Seafarers (the STCW Convention) and its associated Code have been adopted at a Diplomatic Conference in Manila, thereby ensuring that the necessary global standards will be in place to train and certify seafarers to operate technologically advanced ships for [...]

We’ve just got word from Transas that it has been awarded a contract to supply the Dar Es Salaam Maritime Institute in Tanzania with a  new simulator complex. Included in the lot is a full-mission NTPRO 5000 ship simulator, which so rocks that it could leave rival products in the dust. But what makes this [...]

The International Convention on Standards of Training, Certification and Watchkeeping for Seafarers, 1978, is not just a treaty. It’s also a money-spinner or, if you’re a fan of Aesop’s Fables, the goose that lays the golden eggs. Plenty of eggs were laid by the goose when the Convention was overhauled in 1995, spawning multi-million-dollar businesses [...]

The UK-based International Committee on Seafarers Welfare (ICSW) is organising a “Party in the Park” on 26th June at Manila’s Rizal Park, better known by its old name, Luneta. The event is supported by the IMO, ILO, maritime labour unions and local crewing agencies. It comes a day after the close of the IMO Diplomatic [...]

Manila’s maritime sector is in a tizzy. An IMO Diplomatic Conference will take place in the Philippine capital from 21st to 25th June to adopt proposed amendments to the STCW Convention and Code. Expect the fiesta-loving and hospitable Filipinos to try to go overboard in giving their foreign guests, led by Secretary General Efthimios E. [...]

There was near hysteria in Manila before the IMO issued its initial “White List” of STCW-compliant member states in 2000. There was agitation after the BIMCO-ISF Manpower Update warning of officer shortages came out in 2005. What was that all about? The Philippines is still no.1 in the crewing game. It will remain so for [...]