World shipowners to meet in Manila

Shipowners from various parts of the world have chosen Manila as the venue of their forthcoming meeting to be held in April this year.

The council meeting of the International Shipping Federation (ISF), whose membership consists of national shipowners' associations in 46 countries, will also give the opportunity for the Philippines to apprise the international shipping community of the reforms that have been introduced in the local maritime industry.

Carlos C. Salinas, president of the Filipino Shipowners Association, an ISF member, says the event is also a nice opportunity for their counterparts as to what "we can offer particularly in ship owning and operations in the overseas trade."

As the world's largest supplier of seafarers to commercial shipping, the Philippines holds 20 per cent of the maritime labor market. Statistics from the Philippine Overseas Employment showed that the country deployed 196,689 officers and ratings to commercial ships of various flags.

Salinas says since most of the major shipowners in key maritime nations like Norway, Japan, Germany and UK are employing Filipinos, the choice of Manila for this year's venue is quite logical. The April 10-12 meeting will be the first time that the London-based ISF will hold its council meeting outside Europe.

The ISF, whose membership represents more than half of the world's merchant tonnage, has been concerned with labor affairs, manpower and training issues in shipping.

As the largest group of employers of Filipino seafarers, one of ISF's latest concerns is the continuing issue of whether the Philippines will achieve a place on the IMO 'white list' of countries in compliance with the revised Standards of Training, Certification and Watchkeeping (STCW) Convention.

The Philippine compliance to the convention, whose white list is first to be out this year, will assure the continued employment of hundreds of thousands of Filipino seafarers onboard various merchant marine fleet.

Another concern of the federation relates to the provision of proper compensation to seamen who suffer occupational injury. The ISF, which sent a delegation in a series of meeting with Philippine labor officials in March last year, says claims for such incidents have already taken an increasingly high profile during the last two years.

"There has been a growing tendency for some seafarers, particularly those from the Philippines, to be encouraged by lawyers to lodge claims for compensation in foreign courts rather than in their home countries. This has created confusion for shipowners and their third party liability insurers," the ISF said in a recent press statement.

Court procedures differ from country to country, and the standards used by the courts to judge the rights and the wrongs of particular cases can differ widely, as can the levels of compensation awarded. Employers have therefore lacked the certainty required to ensure that their liabilities can be insured and honored, it says.

The ISF together with representatives of the International Group of P&I Clubs have sought to obtain support from the various government agencies to find some means of providing fair and reasonable levels of compensation for seafarers and their dependents within the Philippines legal system. It now wants that in the best interests of seafarers, as well as employers, solutions to be found to these problems as soon as possible.