Investigating the Impact of Seafarer s Domination in English Language on Maritime Transportation Safety

Seafarers inability to communicate with each other in a perfect way is one of the major causes of marine disasters. Accepting this fact seems to be very hard for two reasons first one of the main causes of many human deaths in this regard is the lack of sufficient proficiency of seafarers in English language and second, in such a large industry despite all advances and investments there are lack of skilled human capitals. Perhaps in the simplest way, the origin of this problem is the globalization of the maritime industry or in another way is entering a wide range of individuals with diverse nationalities into the labor market of this industry. Relatively high incomes of the related works of this industry and the growing desire of people in the developing countries for immigration and more incomes in one hand and profits of the owners of maritime transportation companies through employing of cheap workforce but at the same time efficient on the other hand add to the scope of this nationality diversity day to day. Obviously this cultural and linguistic diversity can make problems for seafarers to communicate with each other. The emphasis of the international maritime organization on the employing of efficient workforce and those who have proficiency in English language practically did not have much to do with solving this problem. Meanwhile some owners of shipping companies that are less susceptible to the safety and nationality of ship s crew have been authorized to escape of main standards. This article focuses on seafarer s training centers therefore creating an effective international standard for training workforce and providing a strategy to encourage countries and training centers to follow these standards can be one of the best logical solutions of this problem.

Keywords:

English Language , Safety , Seafarer training , Workforce