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BackgroundSince the 1970's the ILO has been engaged in a technical co-operation programme for the port industry guided by the provisions contained in Dock Work Convention, 1973 (No.137) and Dock Work Recommendation,1973 (No.145) as well as in Occupational Safety and Health (Dock Work) Convention, 1979 (No. 152) and Occupational Safety and Health (Dock Work) Recommendation, 1979 (No. 160). The first two instruments provide for vocational training and retraining of portworkers as a response to developments in cargo handling technology and the later require the provision of the information, training and supervision necessary to ensure the protection of portworkers against risks of accident or injury to health arising out of or in the course of their employment.An ILO publication "New Cargo-Handling Techniques and Their Implications for Employment and Skills" (Couper 1985) and a subsequent study published by the ILO in 1987; "An ILO Strategy for Portworker Training" caused the ILO to devise and implement a global training programme which became known as the Portworker Development Programme (PDP). A pilot project, financed by the Royal Government of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, involved the preparation, testing and evaluation of 30 PDP Units pertaining to container handling and operations. The success of the PDP can be judged from the increasing number of countries and ports which have purchased the PDP training materials and implemented training programmes. The growing wide-spread use of the PDP is a testament to its quality and value. PDP has been implemented in more than 50 countries and has or is in the process of being translated into several languages!
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Updated by MMTT. Approved MM/ET. Last update: 10 July 2008.
