Rep. Lee Yang-soo says, “Eligibility for mandatory training should be expanded to include general and foreign seafarers.”

Rep. Lee Yang-soo says, “Eligibility for mandatory training should be expanded to include general and foreign seafarers.”

(Busan = Yonhap News) Reporter Youngjae Lee = Since 2021, the number of fishing boat workers killed or injured in accidents during fishing has exceeded 1,000.

Many of these people are not required to complete legal safety fishing training, so it was pointed out that the system needs to be improved.

According to data submitted by the National Federation of Fisheries Cooperatives by People Power Party lawmaker Lee Yang-soo, a member of the National Assembly's Agriculture, Food, Rural Affairs, Oceans and Fisheries Committee on the 26th, the number of casualties among fishing crews from 2021 to August of this year was calculated to be 1,074, including 477 deaths and 597 injuries.

Among them, 814 (75.8%), including 309 dead and 505 injured, were ordinary and foreign sailors who were not subject to safety fishing training.

Safe fishing training is intended to prevent marine accidents, and in accordance with relevant laws, fishing boat owners, captains, chief engineers, and communications chiefs are required to complete it.

In fact, looking at last year's safety fishing training results, 94.3% of executive crew members completed it, and almost all of them completed it, but only 1.5% and 27.3% of general crew members and foreign crew members, respectively.

It was found that the experiential education base was also lacking. Permanent training centers were established in 10 fishing boat safety bureaus across the country, but there were only eight safety experience centers, and there were no safety experience centers in Incheon and Tongyeong, Gyeongsangnam-do.

Rep. Lee Yang-soo said, "Although ordinary seafarers and foreign seafarers directly perform work with a high risk of accidents at the fishing site, they are actually excluded from mandatory safety training," and emphasized, "Measures to prevent safety accidents among fishing crews must be strengthened by improving the system, such as expanding the scope of mandatory training and expanding experience facilities where repeated practice is possible."