Eduardo Murillo and Gustavo Castillo
Newspaper La Jornada
Monday, March 7, 2022, p. 13
The facilities of the Education and Training Trust for National Merchant Marine Personnel (Fidena), now part of the Secretary of the Navy (Semar), will become a university, for which the government will acquire a training ship, expand enrollment and will summon more women who wish to pursue a naval career, informed Captain Miguel Ángel Osuna Rodríguez, director of Fidena.
In interview with the day, the official stated that there is worldwide demand for professionals in the merchant marine; He calculated the number of vacancies for officer positions at 8,000 and that of sailors at around 200,000, so the opportunities for those who wish to train in this field are great.
In June of last year, the transfer of all responsibilities in matters of ports and merchant marine – which was held by the Ministry of Communications and Transport – to Semar, which was thus assumed as the National Maritime Authority before the International Maritime Organization, was completed. This included managing the three nautical schools located in Veracruz, Veracruz; Mazatlan, Sinaloa and Tampico, Tamaulipas; in addition to the training center in Ciudad del Carmen, Campeche.
These campuses will now be grouped into a single university, with various faculties, explained Captain Osuna Rodríguez: Although we were higher education institutions, today we will have a more complete university scheme, in which the main change is the increase in the educational offer. The ports had not been considered in the government plans at this level, today we are on the list as agents of change with specialized careers. Given these purposes, the acquisition of the school ship will be extremely important, since it will allow the development of professional seafarers in Mexico to the fullest of their capacity.
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The official explained that the new university will allow training specialists in the scheme short sea shipping (short sea shipping) and the cabotage merchant marine. They are two very important schemes, novel for us, since they are specializations in sea roads, but they are widely used in geographies such as the Baltic and North Seas, whose communication is naval through special vessels, or transport to circumnavigate Greece. , for example
he explained.
The director of the Fidena announced that they are already in negotiations to acquire the training ship that meets the necessary characteristics, and is expected to arrive in Mexico in June 2023 or early 2024. It is about, he said, ensuring that the country has one of the best merchant marine universities, for which there will be a recruitment campaign for women, since now there are only one hundred of the 1,800 students enrolled to date.
Tuition fees for these careers have dropped from more than 6,000 pesos a month two years ago to almost half, and it is expected that a scholarship system will be implemented in the new university.
Captain Osuna Rodríguez rejected that with these actions Semar is militarizing the merchant marine.
“We are very respectful of these ideas, but what we try to do is show that the work we carry out is for the good of the sector, of the merchant marine and, therefore, of the country.
And that is the most important thing, I believe that the policies of Admiral Secretary José Rafael Ojeda Durán and the federal government in terms of nautical education will make it possible to raise levels and position us in a very short time within the top five worldwide.
