012/14

Member States are required to undergo five-yearly independent evaluations of their seafarer training systems. However, those evaluations remain confidential between the IMO, the auditing States and the States being assessed. According to Regulation I/10, member States are required to verify for themselves the effectiveness of other States' maritime education, training and certification systems before recognising certificates issued by those States. However, this can only be realistically achieved through a full systemic audit of the seafarer training system. If this were to happen it is likely that the global training system would be unnecessarily overburdened. This safety issue could be resolved if reports made after the five-yearly independent evaluations were required to be made available to other member states.

The Commission recommends that the Director of Maritime New Zealand promote, through the appropriate IMO forum, the importance of sharing amongst member states information regarding the quality of member states' maritime education, training and certification systems, including a consideration of making the five-yearly evaluations of member states' available to other member states.