Earl Maghirang

Manila will play host for this year’s Philippine-Japan Manning Cooperative Forum with the theme “A Sustainable and United Partnership Towards Global Maritime Leadership – Ensuring a Safe, Stable and Respectable Maritime Community and will feature speakers from Japan who will discuss an overview of the state of the order to maintain its maritime leadership. For their part, Filipino speakers will tackle its activities and programs which will directly respond to the Japanese initiatives. The Department of Education will also face the human resource requirement of Japan through its secondary education strategies while the Commission on Higher Education will discuss the responsibilities and relevance of the maritime curriculum to the said HR requirements of the Japan’s maritime industry. Meanwhile the Department of Labor and Employment is expected to talk about the various employment policies, initiatives and programs that will proactively respond to Japanese demands including those of the maritime sectors. A comprehensive map for the Philippine-Japan maritime community is also expected to be set-up before the end of the forum.

To foster a stronger maritime cooperation, shipping representatives and government officials from the Philippines and Japan attended a conference dubbed, "Working Together to Meet the Challenge for a Stable Supply of Seafarers."

The IMMAJ (International Mariners Management Association of Japan) and the PJMCC (Philippine Japan Manning Consultative Council, Inc.) Foundation, Inc. spearheaded the installation of three training equipment to three maritime agencies.

A call to include seafarers' training in the newly created International Bargaining Forum (IBF) has been forwarded to both ship owners and unions.