More young people have been encouraged to seek a career in the shipping industry after the Ministry of Transportation and Communications (MOTC) started holding annual seafarers’ examinations, with the average acceptance rate rising to 28.95 percent.
The ministry has held two seafarers’ examinations this year. The number of examinees has increased from 385 in the first exam to 462 in the second, with the acceptance rate rising from 26.78 percent to 28.95 percent.
Previously, the exam was hosted by the Ministry of Examination and students in navigation and marine engineering who were still in school were barred from taking the exam. This year, the exam was held by the MOTC, which lifted the restriction.
The MOTC also produced a TV commercial promoting the seafarers’ exam, emphasizing that being a seafarer could help people to save a lot of money to raise a family.
Those who pass the exam can get work as third deck officers or third engineering officers with shipping lines, where the starting monthly wage ranges from NT$96,000 to NT$146,000 (US$3,300 to US$5,000).
Su Chun-yu (蘇俊宇), who took first place in the first seafarer’s exam, is a senior student at the Department of Transportation Science at National Taiwan Ocean University.
He said it was his childhood dream to be a seafarer.
“My father was a fisherman. I have always dreamed of being able to operate fishing boats and go fishing with my father,” he said.
“Even though I am going to operate commercial ships, not fishing boats, my father still supports my wish to become a seafarer,” he added.
Su said he discovered that he gets seasick when he was an intern on a ship. He said that he was not afraid because he was interning on a ship that was a remodeled fishing boat. The commercial ships that he would board in the future are larger and are more stable.
Su said that he prepared for the exam by forming a study group. Because there are five subjects in the exam, each member of the group was assigned to study the old tests for one subject and prepare notes for it.
Chuang Fu-yu (莊馥瑜), a third deck officer at Yang Ming Marine Transport, graduated from National Taiwan Ocean University in 2010. She earns NT$1.2 million a year and says that the high salary was the reason why she decided to become a seafarer.
Many people think that working on a ship is boring, but Chuang said that it really depends on how one uses one’s time.
“The shipping facilities have improved greatly,” she said. “A lot of the seafarers use their spare time to learn new languages or gain new professional knowledge. They have more time to plan for their lives when they are not working.”
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the