DMA: New Certificates of Competency for Fishermen and Seafarers

As of 1 January 2017, all seafarers on merchant ships must hold new STCW certificates because new STCW regulations take effect. Already now it is possible for Danish seafarers to be issued with the new certificate, which will be valid for 5 years.

The new international provisions introduce stricter training requirements, for example as regards the use of electronic charts (ECDIS). This already applies today to quite a few of the Danish training programmes. This means that persons who have completed training programmes as a navigating officer during recent years already meet the requirement.

On 29 September 2013, the STCW-F Convention, i.e. the IMO Convention on the standards of training of persons working on board fishing vessels, entered into force. This means that new certificates of competency for navigating officers are now issued with a reference to the STCW-F Convention. Certificates that have already been issued will be endorsed when they are to be renewed anyway. Engineer officers on fishing vessels will, as previously, be issued with certificates of competency with references to the STCW Convention.

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DMA, October 31, 2013