The importance of preventing accidents to ships and crews has been the driving force behind the STCW 95 and the ISM code. The main objectives of these recent international regulations are to ensure that accidents are prevented and that only those countries and companies complying with the new standards will be able to survive and prosper in the long term. To this end an enforcement network has been devised, where key roles are assigned to Port State Control organisations and the IMO. The ITF Seafarers Trust has made donations to the IMO for their training programme of Maritime Inspectors and Port State Control.
Providing adequate funds for maritime education and training is of paramount importance especially in those countries where financial resources are scarce. Funding has to be the responsibility of flag-state administrations, ship owners and the institutions forming shipping infrastructure. There are a few good examples in which shipping companies, the end customers of the system, have undertaken direct responsibility in providing for the education and training of seafarers.
But there are also bad examples where entrants have to meet their training and educational costs and, worst of all, those flag of convenience administrations making no contribution to the costs of seafarer training and education. The role of the state is invariably critical to training and educational infrastructures and the zero input from flag of convenience states is largely responsible for the current labour force crisis. The World Maritime University provides a good example of the way the burden of financing training is not adequately shared at present. Students from states with the largest fleets in the world are sent for training at the expense of WMU donors. Millions of dollars flow into Panama and Liberia in the form of tonnage taxes but little or none of these goes towards training.
The FOC system currently ensures that the costs of providing suitably trained and qualified seafarers is not borne by the flag state. It is either left to the ship owner, the labour supplying county, the trade union or the individual seafarer to meet these costs. This of course is to the detriment of those national fleets which provide such facilities and amounts to unfair competition.
