The Hindu Business Line : `Maritime training should have more elements'

With growing demand for skilled seafaring personnel the world over, it is timely that the Government plans to set up two maritime universities and bring into service two training ships, one each on the country's Eastern and Western coasts.

But the scope of the training should be widened, said the Secretary, Shipping, Mr D. T. Joseph, in an interview to Business Line.

Excerpts from the interview:

What ails maritime training in India?

In 1982, the government made the mistake of closing down certain training establishments, that is how according to me, the Philippines went beyond India because at the crucial time when shipping expanded we did not have trained Indian seafarers.

And, in the 1990s the unions became so strong, they got into ITF and some other places so we became a little more expensive than I think the Indian situation warranted. If the Indian per capita income is $400 per year and you want the Indian seafarers to get $1350 per month, something is wrong.

But anyway since that is an international agreement, beyond a point we did not want to interfere. But we said we will throw open training to private sector (earlier this was a domain of the government) so that automatically market pressure will build, more and more people will come out trained and there will be a pressure on the job.

So at least as the DG Shipping I was of the firm view that we must increase the scope for training, which meant giving more and more licenses for running maritime institutes without worrying about the employment because you are not worried about the employment in any other sector.

When you open an MBA college, are you seeing the employment, when you open an engineering, medical or an arts college, are you seeing whether all of them are employed or not? Why only here?

This is a small sector. I do not believe in this philosophy. I want to train as many Indians as possible and it is their business to go out and find a job.

And, if you put enough pressure and if your quality is good enough, definitely you will get jobs and unlike in other sectors in shipping, it is not that only in India you will get a job, we know that Indian seafarers are employed on foreign flags also.

So if the unions are sensible and if you are a qualified craftsmen or a seafarer you should get your job.

What needs to be done?

See the point is if you cut your clock to size... ten jobs are coming I will train 11 people, but when 20 jobs come, the remaining nine will go to some other country.

This is what had happened. At least we should learn from our previous mistakes. So we expanded and a number of training institutions came up but naturally it brought in its wake some problems; quality problems, somebody is greedy, you do not get qualified people so I have been saying that through inspections and public awareness, we should be able to reduce these things. But this does not mean you stop giving training or permissions for new institutions to come up.

I personally feel we should train more and more people and at the same time we should improve quality, automatically people will then realise only if you are qualified and quality seafarers you will get jobs. Otherwise, you will not. So in course of time my feeling is that maritime training should also have some more elements that till such time he lands a job he should be able to do some thing else.

Today, unfortunately, it is not like that. It is exclusively devoted to maritime training. So if he gets a job he can use it, but if he does not get a job, then he is not qualified for anything else.

So my own personal opinion is that somebody should try to bring the two together so that as long as there is no job on board the ship I can do some other job. It may be welding, mechanical, electrical so that I keep doing a job for Rs 10,000 and when I get a job on board, I get $1350. This is also a dream I have to work along that direction.

Sailing abroad with Indian seafarers

THE Government has embarked on an aggressive marketing strategy to promote its seafarers abroad through visits, road shows and publicity in a bid to retrieve the ground lost to the Philippines and China.

The Shipping Ministry has set up a group headed by the Additional Secretary and Financial Advisor to look into the marketing of Indian seafarers. "We should make efforts to present the strengths of Indian seafarers in countries with large ship owners and managers. Foreign ship-owners, ship managers and manning agents should be targeted as potential customers," a Ministry official said. Recently, a high-level delegation led by Mr G. S. Sahni, Director-General of Shipping, visited Norway to attend an Indo-Norwegian seminar on "Maritime training and manpower" held in Oslo from April 19 to 21.

The ten-member delegation comprised representatives from FOSMA, MASSA, IIMS and Seafarers representatives. This was the first of its kind promotional visit by an Indian delegation that had representatives of training institutes, seafarers and industry. The seminar was attended by Norwegian shipowners and their representatives, including Bergesen and manning agency Barber International.

According to a BIMCO/ISF Manpower Update, globally there will be a shortage of 46,000 qualified officers by 2010. "To meet this global shortage of officers is a golden opportunity for India because it will not only generate employment opportunities but will also fetch good foreign exchange," the official said.

With training needs growing the world-over and demand rising in non-traditional and multi-purpose fields, India will have to remain tuned to new developing trends. Courses in technical, commercial, financial and legal management have to be devised to meet the needs of the sea-faring and shore-based personnel.

To achieve this objective, the Government is proposing to set up two maritime universities and install two training ships, one each on the Eastern and Western coasts. The maritime training institutes and universities will be have the state-of-the-art training equipment and simulators. - N. M.