Personally I donīt understand why the industrie does not "sponsor" more pilots.
The "industrie" consists of operators that normally are run as companies driven by profit. It is more economical to employ pilots as opposed to someone off the street.
Today can everyone with a big pocket become a pilot, no wonder that there are so much unemployed pilots. They arenīt good enough according to the empolyers.
The authorities will allow anyone that meets or exceeds the minimum requirements for the appropriate licence or ratings to hold such licence or ratings. That does not mean, as you rightly imply, that all holders of such licence or ratings are suitable to fly offshore. That is why testing is performed by the offshore companies.
It's true that there are alot of low-hour pilots that are unemployed. That's why you can call X pilots for testing as opposed to X people off the street. As in this case, I'm sure that you can find 12 suitable candidates out of both groups, while the people off the street would cost the company more to train.
For both the pilot and the company its a win win situation.
In the western world, most employer - employee relations are a win win situation, otherwise they wouldn't exist.
I suspect that the Bond ab-initio scheme is a way to buy publicity. We have already seen that they've got several articles written about it and this very thread seems very popular. Bond probably want to communicate that they are a company investing in people and at the same time showing that they are expanding so heavily that they even need to run this ab-initio scheme.
On the one hand, I'm very positive that this ab-initio scheme is a great opportunity for those candidates that are elected. On the other hand, it's not fair to all low-time pilots with licences that might do just fine on the testing, but never get a chance to even make it to the initial testing. But hey, it's a commercial industry and the operators decide whatever they think is commercially viable, which is probably why Bristow and CHC does not run an ab-initio scheme.