Cover Story
Seamen May Be Out Of A Job
Fiji Hasn't Met Minimum International Maritime Organization Requirements.
February 2002 won’t be a welcome arrival for up to 400 Fijian seamen who have jobs aboard foreign-going cargo ships. Because of negligence and disinterest by Fiji marine authorities they won’t by then have met the new International Maritime Organization (IMO) minimum qualifications for seamen. That means they will lose their jobs since it will be illegal for ship owners to keep them. Some who work on ships that run just between Fiji and other Pacific Islands countries may keep their jobs if local authorities keep a blind eye. But men on ships voyaging to Australia and New Zealand will be unlucky.
Dilly-dally marine department bosses are now frantically trying to get Fiji pushed on to the IMO “white list” of approved countries by May next year. The list records countries that have sea training, assessment, certification and administrative structures that comply with international standards.
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Other island countries that economically count heavily on earnings sent home from men working aboard foreign ships have done rather well. They didn’t delay with pushing their seamen up to the Standards of Training, Certification, and Watchkeeping for Seafarers (STCW) prescribed by the IMO in 1995 with a deadline for compliance by next February. Samoa, Tonga, Tuvalu, Kiribati, the Marshall Islands and Vanuatu scored the STCW rating last November.
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The Solomons Islands, Papua New Guinea and Federated States of Micronesia were expected to do so in May. A few small countries haven’t bothered because few, if any, of their men are at sea or have New Zealand or Australian qualification. French territories are covered by France’s marine regulations.
Men most in need of training are captains, mates and engineers. According to the Pacific Community’s Pacific Seafarers’ Upgrading Program, 1,670 deck and engine room hands need to be upgraded. Australia, Britain, the IMO, Taiwan and Japan have chipped in with funds for training organized by the Pacific Community program.
By February, 160 masters, mates and engineers from Tuvalu, Tonga, Samoa, the Marshalls, Kiribati, Federated States of Micronesia and Fiji had undergone courses in Australia and New Zealand at individual costs ranging from F$5,885 for a Grade 3 engineering course in New Zealand to F$16,644 for a Grade 1/2 master’s course in Australia.
Although there are at least 10 sea training schools now operating in the region, many could not run the higher level of training due to such resources as radars and simulators, Captain John Hogan, a maritime training adviser with the Pacific Community, told Pacific. To cut costs some future course would be run in Fiji with the help of the New Zealand Maritime College, he said. An estimated 7,500 Pacific Islanders are at sea and contribute heavily to the economies of their home nations. Kiribati’s 1,700 foreign-going seamen remit A$12-13 million a year home and Tuvalu’s 900 seamen, 10 percent of the national population, send home about A$7 million.
Hogan said a developing world shortage of seamen, caused by the reluctance of the men of major shipping countries to be at sea for long periods, was opening more job opportunities for Pacific Islands and other seamen.
“Jobs are being filled by non-traditional maritime countries as China, India, the Philippines, Russia and the Balkans,” he said. “Philippines seamen are beginning to cost too much, so shipping companies are looking at China. One thing is whether Pacific Islands seamen want to be away from home for nine to 10 months at a time, which is what we have to look at.”
Photo: Robert T. Keith-Reid
