2015-10-22

The widening  gulf between ship management companies’ expectations and quality of cadets churned out by Maritime Training Institutes could only be bridged when former and latter chalk out some kind of an institutional coordination mechanism where training institutes and ship management companies could have a dialogue on each other requirements enhancing quality of cadets joining ships, concurred honchos of ship management companies at the Indian Ship Management Summit 2015 organised by Shipping Tribune at Mumbai on 8th Oct 2015. Scores of honchos in huddle glossed over gamut of ship management topics like, ‘Make India A Sustainable Source for Seafarers Supply’, ‘Simplification of Examination Process’, ‘Importance of Mentoring at Sea’, ‘Maritime Training: Backbone of The Industry, ‘Confluence of Ship Management & MET Functions’, ‘Career Ashore-Employment Opportunities for Merchant Navy Officers’, ‘Rewiring Resources for India’s Maritime Resurgence’, ‘Ship Management Manning & Training: Can India Become, ‘The Hub’ of Shipping Activities’, etc.

During delegate-speaker open session, one of the delegates cried for seamen administration reforms demanding reforms in the areas like Certificate Of Competency (COC) dispensation where it takes 15 months for the administration to dispense a second mate COC in comparison to countries like China where COC issued within 3 months time frame engendering Chinese nationals to grab precious crew job opportunities in international shipping in comparison to Indian nationals. Capt Philip Mathew of Shipping Corporation of India (SCI) said industry and stakeholders should be concerned about growing third mate joblessness. In the present set up cadets spend more time on institutes and less time on ships, he said.

There should be transparency in the entire examination process with no room of arbitrariness and DGS should outsource certification, endorsement and dispensing of documents like Continuous Discharge Certificates (CDC) akin to Indian pass port to third-party eliminating red tape complexities within the issuance system, he added.

Capt M C Yadav, Director, Foreign Owners Ship Managers Association (FOSMA) clamoured for stringent adoption of sponsored candidate admission entry in MTIs to uphold assurance of employment and quality of crew output. Responding to the question of delay in getting COCs, he said one of the reasons for delay in officers getting certificates is some officers appear in parts and pass the exam. Failing the exams 3 or 4 times is quite considered to be normal among some section of officers, he added. Stakeholders’ lamented the avoidance of Indian crew in international shipping trade because of couple of factors including shorter contract, high pay, and adverse publicity of Indians. Excerpts.

Industry, institute coordination can improve crew quality:Dr Brijendra K Saxena, Principal, Tolani Maritime Institute

There should be well-set feed mechanism between ship management companies and Maritime Training Institutes (MTIs) and a cadet at the institute should know in advance what is expected of him from captain and ship master. In the same vein, faculty at MTIs should enlighten themselves about the expectation of ship master from a newbie cadet and infuse them into classroom training modules to hone cadets for on board challenging duties. Ship Master would be happy to have a deck and engine cadet who knows welding and would lend his helping hand when call of duty comes. The feedback should be institutionalized to enlarge the base of young officers where MTIs should enable a dialogue mechanism facilitating interaction between MTI faculties and Ship Master.  The most important component of crew management professional development begins from MTI that continues further on onboard in the form of on the job mentoring. On toning up training, only few companies are taking the Training Assessment Record (TAR) Book seriously and documenting their feedback and rest of them are not geared up to the TAR practice. Ship management companies should stipulate their cadet expectations when they  go for campus hire to MTIs. They should clearly specify their talent requirements; should provide up-to-date on board feedback to MTIs about current developments in crew management system; should enquire about the MTIs compliance to STCW requirements; find out whether MTIs have in place a Continuous Professional Development process. MTIs in turn should be eager to record the feedback they receive from visiting ship management company; they should evaluate their training set up both training staff and infrastructure analyzing whether they meet the expectations of ship management company.

To the question of reinforcing quality, one should not construe that  that quality of teaching is not about putting up CCTVs in classrooms and spying on faculty in classroom. MTIs struggle to attract quality teaching talent due to low remuneration constraint. It’s ironical to expect a master drawing $10,000 tax free salary to work as an MTI faculty for meager Rs 50,000 or Rs 60,000 at pre-sea MTIs. As the saying goes, when people pay peanuts they only get monkeys. What’s happening around in the name of quality enhancement is a total sham.  Training requirements as laid down in Standards for Training Certification and Watch keeping are of minimum standards and institutes should strive to excel and exceed to match the wants and needs of ship management companies.

Confluence of Ship Mgmt & MTIs

There should be convergence and coordination between ship management and MTIs for greater transfusion of industry standards into institutions. The competence of cadet could be found out from COC backed by knowledge, skills & attitudes and MTIs should tie up with ship management companies for crew management, technical & performance management practices. Pre-sea institutes should know that ship management companies provide vessel specific on board training.

CIP review

Out of 4000 pts, Comprehensive Inspection Programme (CIP) gives 1000 pts to infrastructure and no points are earmarked to faculty training and development; it is quite unfortunate. DGS should thoroughly revisit the CIP assessment process and incorporate the element of continuous faculty training and development. Its time we set the bar high on CIP metrics. At present large number of institutes are getting A1 grade amid shutting down of 4 to 5 MTIs due to unviability of business.

Job opportunities for Merchant Navy Officers: Capt Dinesh Gautama, President, Navkar Corporation Ltd

There are 3 streams of job avenues available for seafaring officers in the realms of administration, technical, and commercial. Seafarers can look for opportunities in ports, terminals, media, trade association etc in administration sphere. On the technical realm they can explore opportunities in manning, management, pilotage, survey etc. The commercial realm of shipping is often lesser known among seafarers. Besides employment and career potential concerns, the statutory apex authority like DG Shipping should know what’s happening inside the industry. There are 185 Non Vessel Operating Common Carrier(NVOCCs), 650 Multimodal Transport Operators(MTOs), 30 container terminals, close to 250 container freight stations, 100 shipping agencies, 100 Custom House Agents, around 60 ship management and mainlines having their own offices in India  that all require maritime regulator attention in resolving industry contentious issues.

Officers and crew shortage weigh heavily on industry : Capt Arun Meta, CEO, Gauri Ships Pvt Ltd.

On the one hand there is decline in median earning by seafarers and on the other hand industry is reeling under huge built up of tonnage.  Though replenishing tonnage need lesser crew to man the fleet, the prevalence of bad market calls for cost control where it is expensive to train a person and retain him for quite a period of time. In the Indian scenario, the questions like whether Indian seamen willing to work with eight different nationalities? need to be answered.  Besides crew attitude, seafarers are demotivated on the job by layers of legislation, enhanced scrutiny, daily morphing industry, and compliance and moving with people on board, criminalization of seafarers.

Nobody wants to be a seadog for life

Generation Y come with the paradigm of not wanting to be a seadog for life. They look for fast-track career with short contracts, less taxation, going on time, competitive salary and surprisingly food comes last on their priority. They want to enjoy internet connectivity on board. With future job opportunities in new ports, inland waterways, dredgers and ancillary industry, industry should rethink on how to market their profession. Questions like how do we get right person in the selection process? Are selection methodology in tune with times? How to enhance retention in the industry? Is it possible to provide a continued career option? Can we allow cross pollination among administration, sailing and commercial shipping vocations? Can we look beyond competence training? How do we involve and empower seafarers? Do we need to better the industry-education connect for continual development of leaders and administrators?

Ship management companies need special status :Capt Navin Passey, Chairman, FOSMA& Managing Director, Wallem Ship Management India

Special efforts are needed to woo ship management companies in to Indian sub-continent. A case in point is Singapore, where a minister took a trip down to Japan urging Japanese Ship Management companies to set shop in Singapore. In India a similar delegation under auspices of former shipping minister G K Vasan went to Japan and Hong Kong, but the given the strong democratic decision making process warranting involvement of various departments’ clearances the implementation is more difficult in Indian settings despite good intention of  few that does not yield results. Wallem moved to India because 85% are Indians but unfortunately shifted back to Hong Kong despite latter being costly location. We had issues like movement of finance and taxation here. Ship management companies coming to India lobby hard to get special status like Special Economic Zone considering it as deemed export trade. We need to acknowledge the fact that ship management companies flock to India for cheaper talent. A superintendent costs around $7000-$8000 that’s just match the house rent in Hong Kong implying how cheaper remains Indian crew cost. We too have moved a big slice of office from Singapore to India, but ease of doing business scenario should improve a great deal. The ease of doing process should be on a par with shipping management business destinations like Cyprus, Monaco, Isle of Man in terms of fiscal incentives.

On the crewing front, there is stabilization of salary level and people with healthy attitude are anticipated to join in future. On the training realm, adverse publicity has to led to overwhelming number of students joining pre-sea institutes with lesser number of on board training berths. Focus of the industry should be on trainee berth management with the involvement of agencies like INSA, MASSA and FOSMA deciding the trainee berth numbers. CIP apportions just 50 pts to on board placement. This is lopsided as land side weightage is given to training underwent at pre-sea colleges.

Cadet quality is low, trainees are now seen as cost: Capt M M Saggi, Director, Narottam Morarjee Institute of Shipping

Due to cost considerations it is hard to attract high quality talent towards maritime teaching that has a direct bearing on the quality of cadet pass out of the institutes. While poor faculty availability in pre-sea institute hits cadet quality, the current notion of ship management companies towards training is expendable to the business. Maritime institutes have to raise resources to pay to quality faculty. At present, the model of defraying faculty salary through student fee is making the system unamenable to change.

Regarding employment generation in seafaring and shipping, we need to convince government that fiscal incentives translate into business growth and job creation that in turn benefits government by greater inflow of tax revenues. The idea of fiscal incentive should be demonstrated before the policy heads of the government in quantitative terms with facts and figures for favourable outcome.

Trainee cadet ship unfeasible

The bid to increase junior office base via trainee slots or trainee ships is an unviable proposition. Shipping companies are not inclined to add trainee slots as it increases the tonnage leading to higher operational costs like port dues. It is estimated that a trainee slot costs around Rs 5 lakh that no company desires to bear in depressing economic situation. Alternatively, the trainee ship too is of no avail as it is not going to sail western or southern hemisphere. Such trainee ships with no cargo carriage add little or no benefit to cadets on board.

With respect to trainee berth augmentation, I moot the idea of exempting the cadet cabin from tonnage inducing ship management companies to take more trainees on board. The plea has to be made directly to tonnage convention by the manpower supplying nations like India.

Deteriorating quality of seafarers : Capt Prabhat Nigam, ASP Ship Management

Crewing companies have lot of issues regarding quality of seafarers passing out of training colleges. It’s kind of piquant situation like student not learned and teacher not taught. Last 2 years, Industry is witnessing poaching of talent and attrition of experienced seafarers that is debated intensely by the crewing and manning managers. Solutions to the trainee crunch motivate us to focus on basics comprising knowledge, skill and attitude. A cadet should pursue knowledge to become an officer, acquire skill thru hands-on on board training and instill attitude by having pride of profession. Cadets go on board to qualify for COC and returns as officers. The moot question is whether cadet has the exposure in areas like manning the commanding station. Notwithstanding I could see the sizeable presence of Indians in ship management industry across geographies like Hong Kong, Singapore and Dubai.

Show more