Italian shipping firm to hire Pinoy seafarers

An Italian shipping company plans to recruit 7,000 to 10,000 Filipino seafarers in the next five to eight years. Cheryl Cordura, fleet head of Costa Cruise Lines, said the hiring of Filipino crew members for 12 ships of Costa Lines will start next year and end in 2015. “[It may be ambitious but] we are targeting at least 7,000 to 15,000 Filipino crews to be deployed to the 12 fleets of Costa," Cordura said. According to her, the shipping line has 4,690 Filipino crew onboard cruise liners of Costa. Cordura admitted that the owner of Costa Lines preferred Filipino crews for its vessels because of their edge in English language speaking and ability to relate to foreign guests. “It’s actually the guest interaction at alam mo naman tayong mga Filipino carinoso tayo eh," added Cordura. Filipino seafarers employed in Costa cruise vessels are assigned in bars, casino, restaurants, housekeeping, gallery and pastry, deck and engines. Costa ships are cruising in Asia, Europe and American shores. Filipino crew and staff in Costa ships earn an average of P120,000 to P200,000 monthly while those occupying supervisory level such as food and beverage managers are earning from P200,000 to as high as P300,000. Leading manning agent Magsaysay Lines handles the recruitment of Filipino seafarers for Costa and has put up a new training facility to upgrade the skills of the crew. Jay Fernando, institute director for Magsaysay Institute of Hospitality and Culinary Arts (MIHCA), noted that since it opened last January, it was able to train around 1,200 students, may of whom were eventually hired by Costa Lines. “We’ve trained already 1,200 and about 700 of them are now on board," Fernando said. The company charges P30,000 to P50,000 fees for a month of training for those hired by Costa Lines. This translates to P6 million monthly revenues to the company. Magsaysay Lines has invested $2 million [or P90 million] for the training facility, Fernando said. Aside from training for cruise ship crew for Costa Lines, MIHCA is also offering classes in culinary arts, baking and pastry, food and beverage, house keeping and frontline office management to non-Costa crews. “The people we train have the feel of really working in the ship because of the facilities," Danella Yujuico, MIHCA's marketing manager said in an interview. - Marie Neri, GMANews.TV