Charles Wami, the chairman of Charkin Maritime Academy in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, said the school has the capacity to provide the required manpower for the maritime as well as the oil and gas sectors.
He said the school remains the only maritime training institution that offers Dynamic Positioning of vessels as a course in Nigeria and has proven to have the capacity to continue offering it.
He called for the support of all stakeholders particularly the Federal and State governments to enable the academy to do more.
Recall that Paul Adalikwu, the secretary general of the Maritime Organisation of West and Central Africa (MOWCA), called for the support of maritime training institutions in the West and Central Africa sub-region.
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Adalikwu made the call after visiting the Regional Maritime University in Ghana, and said there is a need to raise the training and certification standards of maritime academies in the region.
Describing the resources spent to train African seafarers by some countries for globally accepted Certificates of Competency (CoC) as huge costs, he said such funds could be deployed to train them within the MOWCA region.
“We are aware that countries in our region spend more foreign exchange to train their seamen. Many students privately source funding to acquire certificates in oil, chemical, and gas tanker officers’ courses outside Africa. We feel that if specialised courses like dynamic positioning of vessels are done within the MOWCA region, it will cut the cost of traveling, and more youths would benefit,” he said.
