The first studies on Danish seafarers and Danish shipping companies gave interesting information from the perspective of both the seafarers and the shipowners. We found that Danish seafarers use up to 20% of their working time on tasks they deem as administrative burdens. Among employees in shipowners’ landbased offices the figure was 9 %.
Since shipping is a global industry, we found that it would be interesting to also investigate whether the same conditions prevail internationally. We have therefore conducted a survey among international seafarers – thereby strengthening our data to take into account data from 59 nationalities. Our third study shows that 30 % of international seafarers feel that they spend too much time on tasks that they consider to be administrative burdens. We found that all nationalities to some extent are annoyed and frustrated by the same administrative burdens in the maritime sector.
Many people in the maritime sector have contributed valuable time and effort to make the studies successful by helping in relation to raising awareness of the studies and by coming forward with many well-intended points of view that can inform DMA, other authorities and stakeholders in their future reflection and decisionmaking. We want to send our thanks to all these contributors. A special thanks goes to those who helped us disseminate our international survey without whom we would not have been able to succeed in collecting survey data internationally.