Fast-growing shipping fleets lack crew

Fast-growing shipping fleets lack crew

By Robert Wright in London

Published: March 25 2008 17:12 | Last updated: March 25 2008 17:12

Every morning, Greggy Venzuela comes to a tree-shaded area at the junctions of TM Kalaw and Maria Orosa streets in Manila to look for sailors.

Mr Venzuela works for Fleet Management, a supplier of staff to shipowners. He faces ever more intense competition from rivals that have set up stalls in the area, a once-informal jobs market that has gradually grown formal.

Notices offer lavish monthly salaries. “Urgent for bulk carrier vessels: master/chief engineer – $6,000-$6,300; chief mate/second engineer, $4,200-$4,500,” reads one on Barko International’s stall.

The maritime industry is desperate to find crews for fast-growing fleets being built to slake the world’s thirst for coal, iron ore, oil, gas and consumer goods.

In one niche – the largest bulk ships, known as Capesizes – 450 vessels are on order, against an existing fleet of 740. Few expect the market to suffer significantly from recent falls in commodity prices.

Guy Morel, the general secretary of Intermanager, an international association of ship managers, says the problem is serious and ­global.

“We’re talking of several tens of thousands of sea­farers missing from the equation,” he says.

The Philippines is the world’s largest single source of maritime labour, supplying at least 10 per cent of the world’s roughly 1.5m ocean-going seafarers.

Don Ramon Bagatsing, the chairman of the Luneta Seafarers’ Welfare Centre, which offers sailors practical help and oversees the TM Kalaw Street market, says: “It takes 10 years to build a captain; it takes only two years to build a ship. So you see the differential.”

The waiting rooms in the Spanish colonial-era Manila headquarters of NYK-Fil ship management, part of the Japanese shipping conglomerate NYK, testify there are still plenty of would-be Filipino seafarers. But the problem, according to Rogelio Sobremonte, NYK-Fil ship management’s general manager, is that most have only recently completed training.

Captains, first officers and chief engineers are hardest to find, according to Mr Sobremonte, but a shortage of junior officers is also beginning to arise.

LPG and liquefied natural gas ships are suffering acute shortages, according to Eliseo Clemente, the general manager of NYK-Fil’s training centre. “Very few people are being trained to handle these kinds of ships,” he says.

The shortage’s most alarming effect could be safety. Some maritime insurers and classification societies – the companies that check ships’ seaworthiness – have suggested overstreched and undertrained crews might explain a rise last year in shipping accidents.

For men such as Reo Almiranez gathered on TM Kalaw Street, the present conditions have advantages.

The 27-year-old has given up his job as a coastguard to join a merchant ship, probably as a deck hand, a move he says will enhance his career.

When asked what that means, he says: “The money’s better.”