How many out of every 10 Filipino ship officers would do whatever they are told by their foreign captain? I once posed this question to a former chairman of the state marine licensing board in Manila, himself a licensed master mariner. Without hesitating in the least, he answered: “Eight out of 10.”
It may seem odd at this point for Marine Café Blog to criticise the audits conducted by the European Maritime Safety Agency. After all, the EMSA team has visited the Philippines at least seven times since 2006 to verify its compliance with the International Convention on Standards of Training, Certification and Watchkeeping for Seafarers (STCW). More important, I have always regarded these inspections as a necessary gadfly to force the Filipino seafarer factory to shape up.
“To a philosopher all news, as it is called, is gossip, and those who edit and read it are old women over their tea.” Thus wrote Henry David Thoreau with unconcealed disdain for the press. The truth, however, is that most people are hungry for news and will gobble it up even if it is gossip disguised as news. Maritime professionals are no exception. The following are some headlines that should make them sit up and take notice:
In June of 2018 Marine Café Blog exposed the rampant practice in Manila of shortchanging seafarers in the conversion of their dollar remittances to pesos. Uncrupulous manning agents are still at it in 2020. All told, they rake in millions annually without getting even a slap on the wrist for their financial mischief. Why this deplorable state of affairs continues is not hard to understand: the system facilitates the stealing.
Manning agents in Manila may not be living in palaces. But they have servants at their beck and call just like Tsar Nicholas II and his family. And the servants are all young, too — maritime cadets who work as unpaid flunkeys (aka “utility”) and domestic servants in the offices and homes of the agents.
I have never quite understood why Filipinos keep saying they are the top crew-supplying nation. The line is repeated so often by manning agents, journalists and academics that it has become a mantra. Those who say it do so with unconcealed pride — as if manning other...
In the rough and tumble of ship crewing, a completely honest and professional manning agency with real empathy for seafarers can be as hard to find as diamonds in the sand. Seafarers, however, are not looking for diamonds. They simply want to be employed. Their...
The EU threat to derecognise the certificates of Filipino officers serving on board EU-registered vessels has not gone away. By all indications, the proposal is still on the table at the European Commission. It may well stay there for some time given Manila's failure...
Pirates have always been a part of the shipping world. They may be nasty characters but they fascinate the public. Their exploits are commemorated in films such as the Pirates of the Caribbean series and in pirate festivals in North America. But there is a class of...
Every seafarer should have a personal copy of the International Convention on Standards of Training, Certification and Watchkeeping for Seafarers (STCW). After all, it is the bible of the merchant marine. Seafarers are obliged to meet the STCW's minimum standards on...
menagerie: a collection of wild animals that are kept privately or to show to the public (Cambridge Dictionary)Those who have read my e-book, Close Encounters in Maritime Manila (2018), may recall that I used the term “menagerie” in the Preface. No, I was not...
“Never let yourself be diverted,” the famous British mathematician and philosopher, Bertrand Russell, said in a 1959 BBC interview, "either by what you wish to believe, or what you think could have beneficent social effects if it were believed; but look only and...