STCW basic safety training is four separate certificates — Personal Survival Techniques, Fire Prevention and Fire Fighting, Elementary First Aid, and Personal Safety and Social Responsibilities — required under Regulation VI/1 of the STCW Convention before you can work on a seagoing commercial vessel. Typically five to seven days of training when the four are timetabled as one block. Certificates are issued by an approved maritime training institute, not by a flag state and not by an agency. Atomiq College Private Limited, Kathmandu, is listed on IMMARBE’s Approved Entities register as a Maritime Training Institute of the Belize flag administration. Seaman Books, the documentation arm of the same group at #903 Regal Tower, Business Bay, Dubai, prepares the seaman book and the flag-state filings that go alongside the training.

Register your interest on WhatsApp · or send your rank and current certificate dates using the form below and we will come back with the course list your rank actually requires.

What STCW actually stands for, and what it governs

STCW is the International Convention on Standards of Training, Certification and Watchkeeping for Seafarers, adopted by the International Maritime Organization in 1978 and substantially amended since. It is the reason a certificate earned in Kathmandu means something to a master in Rotterdam: it sets one minimum standard of training that ratifying administrations agree to recognise.

What it is not: STCW is not a single certificate. There is no such thing as “an STCW card” that covers everything. It is a convention, and what you hold is a set of individual proficiency certificates issued against specific regulations within it.

That distinction matters commercially. Seafarers routinely arrive at a crewing office believing they hold “STCW” and discover they are missing two of the four basic proficiencies, or that the one they need for their rank sits under a different regulation altogether.

The four basic certificates under Regulation VI/1

Every seafarer with designated safety or emergency duties on a seagoing ship needs all four. Not three. Not “the important ones”.

Together these are what the industry calls Basic Safety Training, or BST. When a crewing manager asks whether you have “your basic”, this is the set they mean.

Is STCW the same as basic training?

Not quite. Basic training is four certificates within STCW. STCW also covers advanced firefighting, survival craft and rescue boats, medical care, security duties, radio operation, electronic chart systems and a good deal more. So every basic training certificate is an STCW certificate, but plenty of STCW certificates are not basic training.

This is a distinction worth getting right before you pay for a course, because “I need STCW” and “I need my basic” are not the same purchase.

Advanced, specialised and security certificates

Beyond the basic four, what your rank requires depends on the vessel, the role and the flag.

How long the training takes

Five to seven days for the full basic set, when a centre timetables the four courses as one continuous block. Add roughly one to two weeks after completion for certificates to be issued.

Door to door — first enquiry to certificates in hand — a normal case runs two to four weeks. It runs longer when a seafarer medical has to be booked from scratch, or when the next intake is full.

Do the four together, at one centre, in one block. Splitting them across centres or across months produces certificates with mismatched issue dates, which complicates every renewal you will do for the rest of your career and occasionally slows a port state control inspection.

What it costs

There is no single STCW price, and anyone quoting you one without asking your rank is guessing.

What moves the number: how many modules you actually need, whether Security Awareness is bundled or priced separately, which centre and which intake, and what sits around the training — a seafarer medical, the seaman book application and any flag-state endorsement are separate costs from separate parties.

Send your rank, the modules you think you need and your target join date on WhatsApp, and you will get the institute’s own fee for your case before you commit to anything.

Who delivers the training

This is the part most agency pages leave vague, so here it is plainly.

A training institute delivers the course and issues the certificate. A flag state recognises it. An agency does neither.

Atomiq College Private Limited is the maritime training institute of Atomiq Group, based at 04 Pasikot, Chapali, Budhanilkantha, Kathmandu, Nepal. It is listed on the International Merchant Marine Registry of Belize (IMMARBE) Approved Entities register, under Maritime Training Institutes.

Seaman Books is the documentation side of the same group, at #903 Regal Tower, Business Bay, Dubai. We prepare and file seaman book applications with flag-state administrations, and we coordinate the documentation that has to line up with your training. We do not issue certificates, we are not a flag state, and we cannot promise a government outcome.

The certificate is not the endorsement

A point that costs seafarers joining dates more often than any other in this cluster.

Your training certificate proves you completed the course. For several flag states, the document a ship actually needs to see is the flag state’s own endorsement of that certificate — a separate document, with its own application, its own fee and its own processing time. A seafarer can hold a perfectly valid certificate and still be turned away because the endorsement was never applied for.

If you are joining a Belize, Panama, Palau, Liberia, Bahamas, Honduras or St. Kitts & Nevis flagged vessel, check which of your certificates need endorsing before you book a flight. That is the part we handle.

Can you get STCW certification online?

No — not the basic four. Personal Survival Techniques requires you to be in the water. Fire Prevention and Fire Fighting requires live fire. Elementary First Aid requires assessed practical demonstration. A certificate issued for these without attendance is not a valid STCW certificate, whatever the website selling it says, and a port state control officer who spots one creates a problem that follows the seafarer for years.

Some theory components can be delivered as computer-based training within an approved centre’s programme. That is not the same thing as an online certificate, and it is worth being suspicious of anyone who blurs the two.

Who needs STCW certification

Anyone with safety or emergency duties on a seagoing commercial vessel: deck officers and engineers, ratings and support crew, marine safety officers, cruise ship service staff, and crew on offshore support vessels.

If you are heading to a rig rather than a vessel, STCW is probably not the certificate you need. Offshore work runs on OPITO standards — BOSIET, HUET, FOET — which are a different regime with different centres. Those are covered separately in offshore training courses.