Seafarers Lament Marginalisation by LNG, Foreign Shipping Companies

Seafarers in the country have decried what they described as marginalisation by the Nigeria LNG Limited and foreign ship owners in preference for their counterpart in other countries with less qualification.

This, they said, was despite the massive investment in seafarers’ manpower development by the federal government championed by the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA).

According to them, the discrimination, which is allegedly common 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 with the Nigerian government as a shareholder.

Speaking on behalf of his colleagues, a Seafarer, Daniel Ikueyemi, posited that the poor feedback mechanism at NIMASA has deprived the agency of the true impact of the investment in seafarers’ development.

Speaking during an interview on a television programme monitored in Lagos, 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 single 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.”

Ikueyemi, proposed that NIMASA should create a seafarers’ desk at the agency with the objective of receiving valuable information and experiences of seafarers especially on practices onboard vessels.

According to him, this can be an avenue to enable the agency resolve the numerous problems associated with seafaring, “as NIMASA would better capture seafarers’ experiences.

“NIMASA shouldn’t allow their resources waste away 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 utilize it during that timeframe.

“Imagine the millions of dollars that has been spent on NSDP already. Nevertheless, NIMASA can’t give account of the number of cadets they have trained so far. A lot of people have left the system unnoticed,” he said.