They want to complicate the certification of seamen again: the case will be considered by the court

A court hearing will be held today in Kyiv regarding the cancellation of the Resolution of the Cabinet of Ministers on simplifying the procedure for certifying seamen.

On April 12, at 11:50 a.m., a meeting of the Sixth Administrative Court of Appeal will be held following a lawsuit filed by former members of the State Qualification Commission — they are protesting against the reform of the seafarer certification procedure.

Currently, the Kyiv District Administrative Court is in the process of a number of cases, the subject of which is the appeal of Resolution No. 1499 “Certain issues of assigning ranks to persons in command of sea vessels.” This was announced on Facebook by the head of the Shipping Administration Yevhen Ignatenko.

Within the scope of these court proceedings, the plaintiffs repeatedly submitted applications for securing the claim, which were not satisfied by the court of first instance. Ex-employees of the DCC appealed the respective decisions to the Sixth Administrative Court of Appeal.

The court will resolve the issue of securing the claim in case No. 320/1062/23 by:

• suspension of the Cabinet of Ministers Resolution No. 1499 dated 30.12.2022 “Some issues of assigning ranks to the command staff of sea vessels”;

• prohibiting the State Service of Sea and Inland Water Transport and Shipping of Ukraine from exercising the powers specified by the resolution.

“Yes, since the adoption of Resolution No. 1499 by the Government in Ukraine, the reform of the graduation procedure has begun, therefore a return to the old schemes is impossible. At the same time, there are many “interested” persons who are dissatisfied with the specified changes and are trying to stop the process of their introduction in various ways, in particular, by initiating various court proceedings,” Ignatenko commented.

The Shipping Administration noted that in two months, the graduation process was established and about 1,000 qualification documents were issued to seafarers under an updated and transparent procedure.

We will remind you that at the end of last year, the Cabinet of Ministers reformed the system of training and certification of seafarers in accordance with international requirements and practices with a new resolution.

The document makes the following changes:

– digitalization of processes and leveling of the possibility of third-party access to the unified State register of seafarers’ documents. This should eliminate any corruption risks by minimizing the influence of the human factor;

– the State Qualification Commission (SQC) will also be responsible for accepting exams for seafarers. It will include specialists in the maritime industry, information about which will be published on the marad.gov.ua website;

– a seafarer can submit an application for obtaining qualification documents through the Diya portal;

– established an exhaustive list of grounds for refusing to issue documents to seafarers. At the same time, the possibility of not only a judicial appeal of the decisions of the SQC, but also an administrative appeal is provided, by sending a complaint to the relevant Appeals Commission;

– the seafarer will have the right to be present during the meeting of the Appeals Commission, which will review the contested decision of the SQC.

– the professional competence of seafarers will be checked using the globally recognized CES test instead of the compromised AST test that was used before;

– instead of the outdated titles of the captain of small/long-distance sailing, the term “small sailing” as such, and other terms that did not comply with the PDNV Convention, the concepts of long-distance and coastal sailing are introduced, as well as the names of the team in accordance with the requirements of the PDNV Convention.

The changes should remove an extra link that slowed down the process of training and certification of seafarers and caused many questions. The introduced changes bring the Ukrainian seamen certification system closer to international standards.