UC gets 300 full scholarships from Norwegian shipowners

Having so much confidence with the capabilities of Filipino maritime cadets, one of the world’s largest shipowners’ association will be granting 300 full scholarship to the University of Cebu- Lapu-Lapu and Mandaue branch.

Under the Norwegian Shipowners Association Philippines Cadet project, 300 new enrollees coming from Visayas and Mindanao targeted for the Bachelor of Science in Nautical or Marine Engineering in UC-LM for the coming semester in June will enjoy full-free tuition scholarships, board and lodging and free books. A scholar will also receive a monthly stipend of about 450-500 dollars during its third year when they go on-board the vessel for their apprenticeship.

The scholarship will provide an opportunity for scholars to avail of a 10-12 months shipboard training aboard international-plying NSA vessels.

In a MOA signing held at the Marco Polo Hotel last Thursday,of UC President Atty. Augusto W. Go expressed his gratitude to the Norwegian shipowners for having recognized the school’s competence in maritime education.

Go said this opportunity is something very important for the school and the students for they will be given the rare chance to be trained using state-of-the-art equipment and be given training by the Norwegians as well.

In line with this scholarship, NSA will also provide UC-LM campus with P18 million worth of dormitory facility plus P6 million dollars training vessel.

The program will formally start in June next year but the school will be accepting scholars as early as January.

The Director of Norwegian Training Center-Manila (NTC-M) Odd Magne Skei said in an interview that their Norwegian Shipowners Association Philippines Cadet project (NSAPC) was the result of UC and  NSA’s long time partnership through the ongoing venture at the UC Maritime Education and Training Center (UC-METC) in Mambaling where they are at the moment over 13 batches of sponsored cadets have been taken to the sea for apprenticeship.

The Norwegian shipowner’s association is a special interest organization of enterprises in Norwegian shipping, offshore and sub sea contracting industry. As of the moment, the organization is comprised of 160 members owning about 1774 vessels worldwide, 60 of which are mobile offshore units. The vessels sail with a mixture of over 60 nationalities and 40% or 24, 000 of the 60, 000 seamen manning these ships and rigs are Filipinos.

UC is one of the few NSA-recognized and partner institutions by the Norwegian Training Center and is recognized by 40 shipping companies and principals all over the world. The school is also the largest educational institutions in the Southern Philippine region that produces highly skilled seafarers every year.

In terms of dollar remittances, Filipino seafarers are considered as the “Unsung Heroes” of the modern times along with other land-based overseas workers (OFWs) which fuels the rebound of the Philippine economy for the year.

There were 274, 497 seamen which comprise 25.83% of the deployed OFWs for the year 2006. These seafarers contributed a total of 1.2 billion to the Philippine economy for the year.

With UC-LM, NSA intends to educate and train as much as 1, 500 promising young minds in the coming school years to supply the increasing demand of seafarers for the global shipping industry.  - Rhia de Pablo