Fishing vessel owners can employ foreign crew members to serve as fishing and navigation and engineering crew officers
- Update
- 2022-11-22
- hit
- 327
Foreign crew members employed by fishing vessel owners were originally only allowed to serve as ordinary crew members. In order to cooperate with the Executive Yuan in promoting the policy of retaining foreign intermediate-level technical manpower, the Fisheries Agency has amended the law to allow fishing vessel owners to recommend foreign crew members to participate in the professional crew officer training for first level engineer, second level ship mate and second level engineer, obtain the practice certificate of crew officer, and being employed as crew officer other than the captain. This policy is to retain high-quality foreign crew members as crew officers, and to ensure the sustainable development of our country's fishery.
The Fisheries Agency stated that, following the first trial of senior foreign crew members participating in crew officer training in March 2022, this time, in line with the Ministry of Labor’s policy of retaining talents, the “Regulations on the Management of the Crew of Fishing Vessels” have been amended and released, allowing fishing vessel owners to recommend the foreign crew members they employed to participate in the professional training of fishing vessel crew officers. After the completion of the training, the foreign crew members who meet the requirements of certain fishing vessel work experience may be employed to serve as junior crew officers of fishing and navigation, and of engineering other than the captain; and continue to participate in high-level crew officer training.
The Fisheries Agency further stated that the training qualification of the foreign crew members employed by fishing vessel owners is as follows: one who has worked in a fishing vessel of our nationality for more than two years and has the ability to communicate in Chinese or Minnan; or has passed the elementary level Chinese Writing Test, and has worked in a fishing vessel of our nationality for more than one year, the fishing vessel owners may recommend the application to the local fisheries association, or offshore fisheries guild or association to participate in the crew officer training.
Finally, the Fisheries Agency stated that foreign crew members have become the main labor force in our country's fishery in recent years. Through training foreign crew officers’professional abilities, we can increase our crew officers’talent pool. In the future, the Fisheries Agency will continue to improve the professional knowledge of foreign crew members and improve the fishery environment.
Contact: Deputy Director General Cheng-Fang Wang
E-mail: chengfan@ms1.fa.gov.tw