The Philippines: A global power in seafaring

(Part 1)

- BERNARDO M. VILLEGAS

At a recent graduation ceremony of the NYK-TDG Maritime Academy (NTMA), located at the Carmel-ray Industrial Zone in Canlubang, I felt very proud of Filipino manpower, despite recent breast-beating about the poor state of Philippine education.

NTMA is a maritime academy founded through a partnership between Nippon Yusen Kaisha (NYK) — one of the world’s largest shipping companies based in Japan which was established in 1885 — and the Transnational Diversified Group, a Filipino-owned business conglomerate established in 1976. It is a boarding “officer school” offering maritime education (e.g., BSMT, BSMarE), with guaranteed employment aboard NYK vessels after graduation.

What impressed me was to see the parents of the graduating officers. They were clearly from very low-income households coming from some remote regions of the Philippines, especially the Cordillera region or Mountain Province. Listening to some of the speeches delivered by some of the graduating officers and the very polished manner with which all the graduates conducted themselves, both during the commencement exercises and the reception that followed after, I am convinced of the great potential of our human resources, despite all the challenges that our educational system is currently facing.

As long as we continue mobilizing the resources and energy of the private sector, we can still address the limitations of our public education system and not give up on our existing labor force, no matter how poor the quality of education they might have received in our public schools. Given remedial measures by private enterprises like NTMA, the handicap suffered by products of our less-than-ideal public educational system can be overcome because of innate talent, especially of our people coming from the lower income groups. I saw that very clearly among those who graduated in that officers training program in Canlubang.