Japan firm builds 10 ships to be manned by Filipinos

Japanese shipping company-K-Line Ship Management Co. Ltd.[Kawasaki Kisen Kaisha] plans to build 10 cargo ships to be manned by an all-Filipino officers and crew. The vessels are expected to be finished by 2010. Shuichiro Maeda, K-Line president, said the company will recruit almost 7,000 Filipinos in the next four years, composed of 3, 330 officers and 3, 600 ratings or crew. The firm, he said, is embarking on an expansion program that entails building 300 new ships starting next year until 2011. “This is part of the fleet expansion," he said. K-Line operates 420 ships in various ports across the globe. “We are now expanding and because of the expansion we will require 7,000 seafarers," said Satoru Kobushima, K-Line’s executive vice-president. On the 10 ships with an all-Filipino officers and crew, Kobushima said his company prefers Filipinos because they have been working well with them in a long time and that having an all-Filipino crew on board a vessel is much easier to manage “because communications would not be a problem." “We don’t want any other nationalities there. We want it to be purely Filipino officers and crews," he said. K-Line is putting up a training school in the Philippines to upgrade the managerial skills of deck officers and crew. The K-Line Maritime Academy-Philippines will be operational in February 2008 and is intended to train at least 10,000 seafarers a year. - Marie Neri, GMANews.TV