The Nigeria Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) has the mandate for training and certifying seafarers. In this report, looks at how the agency has been able to develop indigenous capacity of seafarers to boost the economy.
Shipping is vital to economic development. It contributes over 90 per cent to the world’s economy. There are about 51,400 merchant ships all over the world, transferring goods between places, thereby keeping economies running.
Whether it is oil from the Gulf or iPhones in containers being delivered from one part of the world to another, everything is running round the clock, with precision and diligence that will promote business activities.
But who are those responsible for these robust activities? While the shipbrokers, the charterers and the owners take care of the financial aspects backing the viability of the trade, the seafarers are the ones executing it in real life aspects. The trade is only so good when the product is delivered safe and promptly to the receiver, and seafarers, Sundays or public holidays, notwithstanding. Seafarers do not understand the concept, neither could they be allowed to do so because someone, somewhere, is in need of a product that must be delivered clean.
Also, nations are fuelled by gas and to make it clearer, the shortage of oil supply because of a stalled ship can cause a very big crisis
The job of seafarers involves years of rigorous training in mastering the aspects of navigation, cargo work and ship operations and the daily precise application of it.
Ships carry more than 90 per cent of the world’s trade and these ships are manned and operated by seafarers. Hence, it can be safely said that seafarers are serving 90 per cent of mankind’s need.
Experts believe that with the recent advancements in technology wherein ships are gradually moving towards being unmanned, this could be deemed as a threat to the seafaring profession.
While it might affect the profession in some way, leading practitioners are optimistic that the years of theoretical knowledge, practical applications, and experience at sea can never be replaced by machines.
The sea and winds, they argued, do not follow the predicted patterns, adding that the human angle to shipping will always be invaluable.
However, as critical as seafarers are to the economy, the practitioners are often treated shabbily by ship-owners who mostly employ them. There is a gradual shit, however, as concerned stakeholders make moves to ensure adequate welfare of seafarers.
To ensure sanity in the relationship between ship owners and seafarers, the Federal Government recently threatened to sanction ship owners who default in the implementation of the contributory pension scheme for seafarers.
Steps taken by Jamoh
Findings revealed that NIMASA has embarked on the periodic review of its training policies and guidelines to make them more relevant and functional.
The agency is also evaluating training interventions to know whether or not the objectives had been achieved to improve them, among others.
To improve seafarers’ welfare, the Federal Government has announced that there are policies in the pipeline to improve the quality of training and certification, as well as remuneration for seafarers.
Director-General, NIMASA, Bashir Jamoh, made this known in Lagos.
According to him, “Policies are in the pipeline to improve the quality of training and certificates we give to the seafarers. We are taking steps to standardise the curriculum of our training institutions in line with international standards. We are also working on increasing the remuneration of our seafarers. These policies would be announced as soon as we complete work on them.”
He said seafarers were among the most courageous people in the world, stressing that the theme for this year’s Day of the Seafarer, ‘Seafarers are key workers,’ is a “testament to the fact that the world cannot do without seafarers. Seafarers hold the key to humanity’s survival on a day-to-day basis. They hold the key to our wellbeing during the first and second wave of COVID-19 period.
“The seafarers are unsung heroes, they are also our invisible heroes. We see their handwork every day and everywhere in agricultural machinery, the food we eat, and the unbroken run of the manufacturing base, despite the global lockdown,” he said.
The DG spoke on the challenges faced by seafarers amid the coronavirus pandemic, including stringent work conditions in some countries, movement restrictions, lockdowns, crew change difficulties, fatigue and seasickness, and disruption of contracts.
He said: “As a regulator, we have taken steps to alleviate the suffering of the seafarers. NIMASA was among the first government agencies to declare seafarers as being on essential duty, and we published this in a marine notice. We also issued COVID-19 guidelines to incoming ships towards ensuring that there is no importation of the virus by sea.
“NIMASA was the first in West Africa to issue a COVID-19 marine notice. We challenged ship-owners and employers of seafarers to take necessary proactive measures to lessen the pains of seafarers. We also walked in lockstep with the IMO to tailor all our marine notices in the early period of COVID-19 towards supporting the extension of the validity of seafarers’ certificates, crew change, guidelines, procedure and their designation as essential workers.”
According to Jamoh, “It is said that a good sailor weathers the storm he cannot avoid; COVID-19 was a storm Seafarers couldn’t avoid. As tried and tested seamen and women, our seafarers have continued to weather this storm for us. We celebrate you today. Nigeria thanks you, the world appreciates you, NIMASA as a regulator, will never abandon you. We will support you all the way.”
Meanwhile, seafarers have decried what they described as marginalisation by foreign shipping lines and Nigeria LNG Limited in preference for their counterpart in other countries with less qualification.
This, they said, was despite the massive investment in seafarers’ development by the Federal Government championed by NIMASA.
According to them, the discrimination, formerly popular among foreign companies, has become evident in Nigeria with several indigenous companies, including the Nigeria LNG Limited (NLNG), a liquefied natural gas (LNG) producing company where the Federal Government is a shareholder.
Speaking on behalf of his colleagues, a seafarer, Daniel Ikueyemi, said the poor feedback mechanism at NIMASA has deprived the agency of the true impact of the investment in seafarers’ development.
Ikueyemi lamented that most seafarers trained under the Nigerian Seafarers Development Programme (NSDP) are on the verge of having their Certificates of Competence (CoC) expire, “yet many have no resources to renew it because they never had an opportunity of going on board vessels even for a day’’.
“NLNG rejects seafarers with Nigerian CoCs. NLNG is a company in which the nation has shares. If this certificate doesn’t have value in our country and organisations like NLNG reject it, there is no need talking about acceptability of this certificate around the globe. There is no point wasting our time on that, “he said.
Ikueyemi proposed that NIMASA creates a seafarers’ desk at the agency to receive valuable information and experiences of seafarers, especially on practices onboard vessels.
According to him, this can be an avenue to enable the agency to resolve the numerous problems associated with seafaring, as “NIMASA would better capture seafarers’ experiences.”
His words: “NIMASA shouldn’t allow their resources to be wasted because that is what happens when the seafarers aren’t engaged. The duration of CoC is five years and it becomes useless if one doesn’t utilise it during that time frame to boost the economy.”
