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MANILA, Philippines?As other industries sink due to the global recession, the Philippine maritime industry has managed to keep afloat, prompting the Maritime Academy of Asia and the Pacific (Maap) in Mariveles, Bataan to even expand its capability to accommodate more students.
Established in January 14, 1998 by Captain Gregorio Oca, president of the Associated Marine Officers and Seaman's Union of the Philippines (Amosup), Maap has been producing premier maritime graduates. (Amosup, with its 85,000 members, is the largest union of seafarers in the world.)
Maap was established in response to observations that Filipino seafarers are not quite at par with their counterparts from other parts of the world, that Filipino seafarers dominate the world market only by their numbers, not by the quality of their service.
?So Captain Oca said we are going to put up a school that?s going to beat everybody,? said Maap president and Amosup vice president retired Vice Admiral Eduardo Santos.
Some 260,000 Filipino seafarers are engaged in the international shipping trade, making up 26 percent of the more than one million seamen worldwide, Santos said.
The school first opened and received its first set of 150 cadets in 1999 who took up four-year courses on Bachelor of Science in Marine Transportation (BSMT), Bachelor of Science in Marine Engineering (BSMarE), and Bachelor of Science in Marine Transportation and Engineering (BSMTE).
?Just to get ourselves and the systems going, we started small, then it (number of cadets) constantly increased. This batch of freshmen students, we admitted 500 cadets so that means, in four years? time we will have 2000 cadets,? Santos said.
The academy?s first set of cadets graduated in 2003 and one of them has already received his master?s license and has been promoted as a ship captain at the age of 27 years old.
?I told him take your time you don?t become a master because of your license, you become a master because of your experience,? Santos said.
Maap is run by a governing board from the Amosup, with other members coming from private shipping unions like the Danish Shipowners Association, the Norwegian Shipowners Association, the Japanese Shipowners Association, the All Japan Seamen?s Union, the International Worker's Transport Federation, the International Maritime Employees Committee, and the Filipino Association of Mariner's Employment.
?The advantage here is that we have the backing of the union, all cadets will be guaranteed employment after graduation,? Santos said.
All cadets who enter Maap are automatically scholars and their education is paid for by a union of shipping companies who will eventually hire them once they graduate.
Unions pay Maap $300 per student per month and the amount goes to the improvement and maintenance of the school?s facilities and for the salaries of the faculty members.
Recently, the International Mariners Management Association of Japan (Immaj) has even set up its own campus within Maap?s 18-hectare property in Bataan for the exclusive use of their scholar cadets.
?They (international shipping firms) spend so much to ensure that the cadets will go to them,? Santos said.
He added that one of the values that Maap instills into their cadets is loyalty since there is a lot of ?piracy? within the industry.
?That is why we teach our cadets loyalty. You have to be loyal to your company, the company that sent you to school,? Santos said.
?We are trying to remove the stigma that Filipinos are mercenaries,? he added.
Maap graduates will all eventually become maritime officers, but their first job after graduation will depend on the needs of the company that will hire them.
Some companies will immediately make them junior officers or third mate understudy, while others, mostly Japanese-owned companies, let fresh graduates start from the bottom as able seamen, then evaluate them after one contract, and depending on their performance, promote them to officer status.
When asked how big the role of Maap is in keeping the maritime industry alive in the Philippines, Santos said: ?We are not saying that we are important, we are just saying that we are trying to produce the best officers that can be.?
?Our objective mainly is to make sure that each one of these (cadets) become good captains and engineers aboard ships,? he added.
