INSUFFICIENT LOCAL SEAFARER WITH COCs

After sometimes gazing on the statistics from the Marine Department of Malaysia, i come to realize that the number given are only a figure that does not telling the whole stories. 

Seafarer registration in Malaysia is divided into three categories, they are; i) Malaysian Seafarer, ii) Foreign Seafarer, and iii) Government Seafarer.

The validity of each registration also differ; where, the Malaysian and Government category is 5 years and 1 year for foreign seafarer. That is to say that a Foreign Seafarer need to renew their registration in annual basis (every year).

So, the question here, How many Foreign Seafarers in this year having a valid registration? Could it be that all that registered Foreign Seafarer in this year are 100% valid. NO!!!, so roughly... how many percent from that recorded registration are actually still valid?

The total number shown in that statistic are accumulative by monthly and yearly. These number does not indicate that if XXXX number of Foreign Seafarer registered, that is THE number that Malaysia Seafarers are lacking. To be honest, i will agree if a percentage of it. But to prove that, we need a number showing how many Foreign Seafarer registration still valid for this year, for example. It would be great if there is a data showing the trend in the past 5 years or more.

A good data would be from the crew agreement since it is the only document that can really shows the number of seafarers on board in any one time, also, it shows how many Foreign and Malaysian Seafarer currently sign-on with Grade (COC/COR) and Rank. But this is extremely difficult to get.