In the ASEAN countries, those who wish to become seafarers are provided with extremely inadequate opportunities to undergo shipboard training which is required to obtain certificates of competency as maritime officers. This is a project, based on such a situation, to expand shipboard training opportunities, by studying measures to make full use of training ships owned by maritime education institutes of each country and existing merchant ships in the private sector.
This is a project to improve the quality of maritime education of each country through the upgrading of instructors of maritime education facilities of each country and through the improvement of their curriculums, by structuring a system to exchange personnel, including the dispatch, from our country, of personnel engaged in maritime education.
This is a project to collect and distribute information about various initiatives for seafarers, including policies and scholarship systems, taken by each national government, private body and maritime education institute, thereby to share information in the field of seafarers and revitalize such activities.
In April 2009, The JSU and IMMAJ inaugurated a school for training ship officers for Japanese shipping companies, within the campus of the Maritime Academy of Asia and the Pacific, a maritime institute belonging to The Associate Marine Officers’ & Seamen’s Union of the Philippines. Before opening the school, The JSU and IMMAJ set up an education committee composed of experts in marine technical matters. Its mission was to determine how to best educate and nurture the type of competent ship officers that will be needed to meet the need of Japan’s shipping industry.
