Seafarers’ welfare worries NIMASA as capacity building tops agenda

The Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) is perfecting plans to create jobs for Nigerian seafarers through intensive capacity building.

Speaking during the 2013 World Seafarers’ Day as set aside by International Maritime Organisation (IMO), Patrick Akpobolokemi, director general of NIMASA, said the agency has set up an electronic pooling project to register, verify and place Nigerian seafarers onboard local and international ships in line with global practices.

Listing other seafarers’ welfare plan, Akpobolokemi said the agency has collaborated with the National Seafarers’ Welfare Board of Nigeria to address issues of humanitarian response and other social ills affecting Nigerian seafarers.

NIMASA, he said, developed a capacity building programme known as ‘National Seafarers Development Programme’ (NSDP), which aims at training thousands of seafarers in different international institutions with the collaboration of state governments on 60:40 percent funding ratio. Currently, the first set of these cadets are onboard ships undergoing sea time.

“At the long-run, this will help to meet the demand of wealth creation by training more Nigerians and enabling them to have gainful employment in line with the transformation agenda. The agency is complementing the seafarers’ efforts in acquiring the basic mandatory safety and specialised certificates. The agency is also facilitating the establishment of Institutes of Maritime Studies in four Nigerian universities,” Akpobolokemi said.

“This year, the agency successfully facilitated the ratification of the Maritime Labour Convention (MLC) 2006 and submitted the instrument of ratification at the International Labour Organisation (ILO) headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland for possible domestication in Nigeria,” he added.

The convention, which will come into force in August 2013, is aimed at improving the living and working condition of seafarers. All these, he said, are geared towards ensuring that there is availability of capacity that will facilitate employment within the Cabotage regime and international vessels as well.

Anthony Nted, president general of Maritime Workers Union of Nigeria (MWUN), while decrying the neglect of seafarers by government, said seafaring was a serious foreign revenue earner to the country during the time of Nigeria National Shipping Line (NNSL). He therefore solicited government support in fighting the menace of piracy, which has become a big threat to lives of seamen, while also calling for the acquisition of oceangoing vessels and the resuscitation of NNSL on public private partnership (PPP) basis.

In a related development, stakeholders who gathered at the event organised by the Maritime Reporters Association of Nigeria (MARAN) decried the non-availability of data on Nigerian seafarers such that the number of seamen in the country is unknown.

Joshua Oyewunmi, managing director, Dangote Port Operations, said there used to be data on seafarers in the 1960s but that government today has failed to treat seafarers well. “It was government that wrecked the Nigeria National Shipping Line. It is sad that even up till now there are no vessels to train seafarers,” he said.