There are thousands of shipping agencies of some sort that you can find in the Philippines. Whether its domestic or international shipping, you can find one in almost all major cities in the country.
However, to find a good one is like finding a needle in a haystack. It is not easy for us to call one agency a “home”. There are a lot of factors that we consider so that we will stick into this agency.
In this blog, we will tackle what an ideal shipping agency is for us. Take off your shoes, put on ours and see this blog from our point of view.
What we’re looking for?
1. Regular rotation
Probably the biggest factor of them all. Knowing that our employment is contractual in nature, securing a regular deployment onboard ships easens our worries about our next contract.
However, there’s a catch. Say, your agency is providing a regular rotation but the intervals are way too long, then the seafarer might still leave.
What we truly desire is that there will be available schedule on the month that we like to go onboard. Only few agencies provides this, and normally, these are the ones that is very difficult to get in.
2. On time crediting of allotments & transparency
This also accounts as one of the biggest factor to consider when talking about a good shipping agency. The credit of allotment in a fix date of the month, say, 25th of each month is what we mean by this.
Some agency gives out range dates, say in 23rd to 25th of each month. Both are still okay. What’s not acceptable is when it gets delayed, not by days but by months.
Yes, there are still shipping agencies in the Philippines that has delays in crediting the allotments of their seafarers. That is really a bad place to be in.
Transparency is another thing. This will prove out to be one of the best effort shipping agencies could make to its seastaff.
Detailing in each monthly payslip the set of deductions from seafarers’ salary inlcuding the exchange rates used is a much commendable practice.
Onboard there are speculations of widespread corruption by some office staff when it regards to crediting allotment for its seastaff. It goes by the accusation of some that there are offices that uses exchange rates that are so low compared to the present market conditions.
Some of them don’t even know how much deductions they got or what exhange rates used. All they will try to compute is the amount credited to their accounts divided by the amount of what they sent.
3. Competitive salaries & benefits
Majority of seafarers would still choose the agency with a higher pay over anything else if given a chance to do so. When you pair it up with good and regular rotation, its already a perfect combination for a seafarer to stay.
By being above median wages and many welfare benefits like health cards, agencies can attract plenty seafarers to join them.
Many of us wants to maximize every value we get for the sacrifices we’ll make under our contract. There are some who negotiates their wages before they sign any contracts.
Overall, this factor will greatly make a shipping agency attractive. There will be plenty of applicants for vacant positions however, this might mean also that since they already are a good agency, crew retention rate may also be high. That means no crew will leave the company anytime soon.
4. Crew welfare taken care of
This means that our welfare is taken care of onboard or ashore. Agencies have programs to promote welfare, health and education among its employees.
Aside from AMOSUP welfare benefits, there are agencies that takes the effort to reach out to the families of their seafarers.
Informing and involving them of the programs that they are planning or even regularly conducting is a good measure of this factor.
Some of this programs will be Christmas parties, donation drive and seminars of some sort is a good manifestation that the agency is promoting and caring for crew welfare beyond what they get at sea.
5. Career Development for crew
Most crew will stick around one agency if they see opportunity for career growth. This will specially be the case if the office will actually help them with the advancement of their careers.
Most agencies keep crew for the sake of deployment and does not particularly encourage them to take exams and climb up the ladder. They should give fair chance to all crew who are aiming for higher rank. After all, its the agency who will benefit for this initiative in the long run.
If however there are cadet program in place, then the crew will realize that the chance he has is very slim. As most agencies prioritizes seafarers who are part of their cadet program for promotion.
Moreover if the crew realizes that promotion is a possibility in the agency he is in, then he will stick around long enough to get promoted.
6. WiFi onboard ships
Though this is entirely out of manning agencies’ control, seafarer nowadays does have the preference of embarking ships with WiFi.
Its actually a boost of morale as shore leave restrictions are still in place. Taking the burden of homesickness away is already a huge help. The freedom to communicate with family and loved ones at no cost is really a big advantage to us.
There are some ships who charge their crew with data bundles e.g. $10 for 500MB and there are ships that the WiFi is completely free.
This factor might be the least of all the things we will consider at first but will certainly be a big factor once we try to look for another agency.
What did we miss?
State your factor in the comments as we might have missed something. There are a lot of factors like availability or the urgency of embarkation. We didnt include it because it is not a regular occurence.
Let us know in the comments on what other things we might miss on this one!