The government is speeding up the supply of foreign manpower to solve the severe manpower shortage in the shipbuilding industry. The time taken for various procedures such as visa issuance is reduced to a minimum, and the scale of human resource recruitment is expanded.
The Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy and the Ministry of Justice announced on the 6th that they would shorten domestic administrative procedures from four months to one month in relation to the supply of foreign manpower to the shipbuilding industry, and that they would process all 1,000 visas currently pending issuance within this month.
The 토토 shipbuilding industry expects a total of 14,000 manpower shortages by the end of this year due to a recent surge in orders. In order to solve the manpower shortage, the government revised the guidelines for issuance of ‘specific activity ( E-7 ) visa’ targeting skilled workers in April of last year . Until then, KOTRA was in charge of supplying local foreign skilled manpower, but it had difficulty securing manpower due to its lack of expertise in the shipbuilding industry. For this reason, the government has decided to let domestic shipbuilders directly secure manpower and ease the career requirements for manpower who have passed the government’s proficiency verification. However, even after the system was changed in April of last year, only 412 people were issued visas as welders, painters, electricians, and plant workers. Although 1,621 people applied for visas through recommendations from shipbuilders and government verification, only one-fourth of them have been granted visas so far. This is because of delays in domestic administrative procedures.
First of all, the Ministry of Justice decided to send a total of 20 people, 4 people each, to Busan, Ulsan, Changwon, Geoje, and Mokpo to support the special screening for shipbuilding industry visas, reducing the time from pre-screening to visa issuance from the current five weeks to less than 10 days. The percentage of foreign workers allowed by company is currently 20% of domestic workers , but temporarily for the next two yearsdecided to increase it to 30%. When issuing a ‘general skilled worker visa ( E-7-3 )’ to an international student graduating from a shipbuilding-related department at a domestic university, the practical ability verification is exempted. The Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy reduces the period from 10 days to 5 days from the application for preliminary recommendation by shipbuilders to preliminary recommendation by the Shipbuilding Association and employment recommendation by the Ministry of Industry. The government will also increase the annual allocation of ‘Skilled Skilled Worker Visa ( E-7-4 )’ from 2,000 to 5,000, which is issued to non-
professionals ( E-9 ) who maintain employment status in Korea for a long period of time . It was decided to allocate 400 people separately to the field. If trainees from Thailand and Indonesia with a high school diploma or higher complete technical training at a domestic educational institution, a new system will be established to convert the existing trainee visa to an E-7 visa for skilled workers. A government official said, “Through close cooperation with shipbuilders, we will reduce the time required to supply foreign technical manpower and increase the scale,” adding, “We will support the long-awaited boom in shipbuilding orders as much as possible.”