SENATOR Pia Cayetano gave assurances that the Commission on Higher Education continues to implement reforms to comply with the observations of the European Maritime Safety Agency and to protect Filipino seafarers.

President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. has directed CHED to work with the Departments of Transportation, Labor and Employment and Migrant Workers to implement more reforms to comply with the requirements of EMSA, the failure of which could compromise the employment of 50,000 Filipino seamen.

During the plenary interpellation on the proposed CHED budget for 2023, Cayetano said the commission aims to attend to the development and issuances of revised policies, standards and guidelines or curriculum for implementation of Maritime Higher Education Institutions for School Year 2022-2023.

She disclosed that CHED has closed 15 maritime programs as of 2022.

“As to the non-compliance of maritime HEIs, CHED has reduced the number of maritime HEIs from 128 to 83. This is over the span of 1994 to 2022,” the senator said.

“There are schools that have other programs. For example, customs administration, so hindi affected yun, in case that the school’s maritime program is ordered closed by CHED. So it’s not the whole school that will be closed by CHED. It’s just the program that will be closed. So tuloy-tuloy naman ang school na yun for their other programs,” Cayetano added.

The commission has imposed a 5-year moratorium on the opening of new maritime programs while attending to the development of standardized course packages.

“The 5 years moratorium on the establishment of new maritime programs will give CHED enough time to really evaluate existing schools without having to deal with the opening of new ones because most likely, those will be the same schools, in the guise of a different entity, or different owners, that will reapply. So the five years gives them time to work with the existing schools,” the senator said.