Philippine E-Journals

Probing the International Operational Status of Bulk Carrier Vessels as Perceived by Selected Manning Agencies of the Philippines

Bon Jovie Tolo | Danielle C. Mañalac | Merlo D. Mostales | Val O. Conde | Mark A. Brimon

 

Abstract:

International bulk carrier vessel is one of the fleets where Filipino seafarers have manned for decades. Hence, this has brought a number of employments to this one great labor force of the country – the seafarers. However, bulk carriers hit a perfectly imperfect storm in 2015 due to the heavily subsidized industrial activity in China. With this sudden situation, hundreds, if not, thousands of Filipino seafarers have been and will still be displaced. This prompted the researchers to probe the international operational status of bulk carrier vessels within the perspective of selected manning agencies of the Philippines. To operate the probe, the study posited on the following objectives: the manning agencies' view and prevailing factors in the international operational status of bulk carrier vessels; and, the measures they took to maintain the demand of bulk carrier vessels. Using descriptive -- qualitative design, the researchers outsourced one key person from each of the 5 selected manning agencies in the City of Manila. An unstructured questionnaire, constructed via data triangulation, was used to gather the views of the respondents, Notation and simple phone audio recorder were used to document the interview proceeding which was done during the month of September 2016. Based on the results of the study, Majority of the key resource persons were aged 50 and above (60%), have 16 to 30 years of vessel experience (60%), have been holding their present manning agency position for 4 to 6 years (60%) and have boarded between 20 to more than 50 vessels (80%) during their seafaring career. The respondents view a very "tight competition" in getting bulk carrier vessel principals who are mostly from Europe, Greece and Japan. Hence, they do various strategies to attract principals such as optimizing and maximizing resources, having their own training center, and being honest with principal clients. With the above strategies, they expect to be stable and acquire more bulk carrier vessels in the next 5 years. On the other hand, respondents are unanimous in claiming that "economy" is one big factor that affects the operational status of bulk carrier vessels. Specifically, the low trading of raw materials worldwide has actually affected the demand for bulk carrier vessels as inter -- region transport. Hence, some principals pulled-out their contracts.