Group of Aggrieved Seafarers urge FG to develop database for employment in shipping companies
By Babatunde Aremu
A Group of Aggrieved cadets have called on the federal Government to fill the Gap of the Teeming Army of unemployed seafarers in the country .
The Group made this call on Tuesday in Lagos while fielding questions from journalists at a press conference held at the Maritime Reporters Association of Nigeria (MARAN ) secretariat in Apapa Lagos
The Group lamented that most of them are products of Maritime Academy of Nigeria (MAN), Oron who graduated in the last ten years .
Cadet Adam Ahmed is one of the cadets .
He said
“Hundreds and thousands of seafarers cadets are jobless searching for sea time with no success . Many have sacrificed their resources and the struggle remains the same , no sea time, no job opportunity . A lot of us has lost hope and shut out their maritime aspirations. A lot of us are frustrated because th rejection is real “
They want urgent steps to be taken by the federal Government to address the situation so as to prevent Nigeria from being a laughing stock in the global maritime industry.
President , Maritime Reporters Association of Nigeria ( MARAN) Mr. Godfrey Bibvere and host of the press conference also speaks on the situation.
“The neglect of seafarers after their academic work in pursuit of the sea time by the Nigerian government is forcing young seafarers male and female, to go begging for sea time placement from foreign shipping lines and practitioners.
Nigeria cadets are presently all over the internet begging for sea time space. President Bola Ahmed Tinubu must as a matter of urgency, direct the minister of Marine& Blue Economy NIMASA to commerce record taking of all seafarers seeking sea time placement and also those who have completed their sea time and seeking employment; so that a data base can be created to serve as ready pool of information and reference.
The presidency must go further to ensure that the NIMASA Seafarers Data Warehouse is verifiable, dependable, reliable and valid to ensure that foreign bodies coming for them do not get substandard cadets. The second leg must be for the President to also direct NIMASA to create an enabling environment for Nigerians to own vessels, not just for the Cabotage environment but for global shipping business”
The problems according to Mr. Bibvere are enormous but can be resolved with all hands on deck.
“Whereas National Seafarers Development Programme NSDP made meaning at its conception about two decades ago, the programme has lost content, ideal and innovation and is no longer a valid solution because a lot of the beneficiaries have ended up unemployed, rendering the expectation presently defective and unrealistic. Churning out Cadets with far limited prospects for sea time training is defeatist in the circumstance that unavailability of training vessels have become a major disincentive. Under the circumstances, it is best to strengthen the Certificate of Competency, CoC, so that seafarers trained in Nigeria are readily available for the international market, which a better middle of the way solution. It will be recalled that in the days of Nigerian National Shipping Line, NNSL, there was no scarcity of sea time training for Nigerian cadets. While we are not proposing government ownership of shipping lines, we are calling on government to put in place deliberate policy that will radically recreate and strengthen local shipping capacity where Nigerian ship owners can be empowered to participate in shipping trade and providing them window of guarantee for jobs that will enable them continue to operate and remain afloat as a national concern. When this national economic reality is in place, the problem of Nigeria seafarers going cap in hand to beg for sea time training overseas will be a thing of the past. The conditions of our cadets thousands and thousands of who are clearly stranded is heartrending as can be seen online. I must say that the ones you see online are the ones who are still hopeful, who still have their dreams alive but there are so many more that have apparently lost hope due to difficulty in securing sea time training as a condition for securing jobs onboard vessels. A lot of such cadets ended up becoming disillusioned and have become to commercial okada riders, POS operators, bus conductor, touts and so on. These are young and qualified people who are seeking jobs at a global stage, despite the predicted shortage of seafarers at the global stage in the near future.
The MARAN President also urged Bola Tinubu led government to quickly approve the disbursement of CVFF and provide urgent remedy to recreate a financial support to help ship owners begin the process of acquiring vessels.