Crewing Specialists Philippines

“According to the Department of Migrant Workers (DMW), since 1987 the Philippines has been the world’s main supplier of sea-based workers, making the country the manning capital of the world. Around 229,000 Filipino workers are on board merchant shipping vessels around the world at any given time. Overall, Filipino sea-based workers comprise more than 25 percent of the 1.5 million mariners worldwide, making them the single biggest seafarer nationality bloc in the shipping industry.

It’s no surprise that Filipino seafarers have made a mark in the maritime industry. The nation itself is an archipelago, with local seafarers voyaging long before Spanish galleons traveled between Manila and Acapulco. However, the surge in the number of Filipino sea-based workers occurred during the oil crises in the 1970s when the world could no longer afford Western crews. The need for seafarers drew Filipinos from the underprivileged provinces of the Philippines to enroll in the local maritime schools.
Today the Philippines continues to be the primary source of sea-based workers in the global shipping and transport market, providing manpower for tankers and sea vessels from other countries around the world, most notably Denmark, Japan, the United States, Panama, Liberia, Cyprus, Bahamas, Jamaica, Greece, Malta, Singapore, Norway, and Germany.

Most major universities of the Philippines offer Maritime courses with the leading public school being the Government-funded Philippines Merchant Marine Academy. It also has its own training centre for further development of seafarers. There are between 20-35,000 maritime students completing their three-year course every year but only about 5,000 manage to find jobs on-board ships to continue their seafaring career. As these numbers reveal there is a huge supply of cadets available every year to be developed to officers and crew for any company willing to invest in cadetship training developing and building their pool of seafarers.”