The crucial aspect is the wrong criterion that people have about
safety, when saying that it does not produce anything and it has a high cost, and
furthermore, seen under the component of the human factor, a large number of the people
included within the referred activity are self-confident and consider themselves very
knowledgeable about what is fundamental without needing any more.
In the maritime activity, to be seafarers went together with the
hardness of the environment and the worst life and work conditions aboard any type of
vessels. This approach of the situation represented a passive attitude, on account of
which, they lived day in day out resolving the difficulties as they appeared, in which
case, first the damages are suffered and then the corrective measures are taken. This way
of seeing things can vary substantially when the attitude and aptitude of crews are
cultivated towards safety, by means of continued specific and specialized training, until
reaching the conviction that the permanency aboard any type of ship is an occupational
activity that does not have to be more insecure that any other activity developed on land.
Normalized training courses were evidently necessary, since, during the
period 1985-1989, 18 maritime flags out of a total of 73 analyzed, had a percentage of
ship abandonment higher than 30% in fire situations aboard, being among them the Spanish
crews, of which only 13% had safety knowledge, what gave a clear proof of the scarce
preparation to solve by themselves the emergency situations created; now, it should be
expected that the efficiency of the mentioned courses may have reduced radically the
mentioned percentage, analysis that it is being carried out these days and which will be
available shortly.
Another important determining factor is the composition of crews in the
development of the activity on board in aspects such as work organization, the
instructions and procedures designed for the accomplishment of tasks and the differences
in treatment between those of greater intrinsic risk for the generation of an accident or
considering the level of knowledge that such crews have, a job that long ago could be
considered common, today and for the same ship, can acquire the treatment of extraordinary
when the ones who have to accomplish it lack the necessary knowledge for this. In this
case, a common job increases the risk in the operation and stops being common.
Another aspect is the drastic reduction in number of ship crew members,
which can result in a meaningful detriment of safety, before this happened in a scarce
number of flags labelled by unsafety, high accidentability, and the low quality of their
services, though apparently, they showed a greater competitiveness reached at the expense
of seafarers' safety and a lack of respect towards environment. In spite of these trends,
it must be observed that there are certain factors that limit the reduction of the number
of crew members for each ship, below this figure, highly insecure organizational positions
are found.
In addition to the regulations that exclusively determine the
composition of crew in relation to the tonnage of the ship and the power of the propelling
system (legal aspects of the topic), the problem must be envisaged under the strict
criterion of safety in the different operations that can be carried out
