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Friday,Mar 05,2010
V. Ships president says lack of dedicated space on current newbuildings is hindering training
V. SHIPS and Intermanager president Roberto Giorgi has called for new ship design regulations to mandate the provision of dedicated cadet berths on commercial vessels.
Mr Giorgi said the shipmanagement sector was increasingly alarmed at the difficulty in accommodating cadets aboard the current generation of merchant ships, on which living space had been sharply reduced over the past decade.
He argued that the prevailing insufficiency or inadequacy of cadet berths in the merchant fleet was having a damaging impact on both training and recruitment, adding that over time it would inevitably erode the industry’s efforts to build a challenging and attractive career path for promising young officers.
He said he would approach the other major industry associations, in particular those representing shipowners, with a view to a concerted lobbying effort on the issue, which he described as increasingly critical given the industry’s existing difficulties on recruitment and training.
“The design of modern accommodation is proving to be a real constraint in terms of the number of cadets we are able to train and, importantly, the way in which cadets are inducted into a life at sea,” Mr Giorgi said.
V.Ships has around 500 cadets sailing on board its managed vessels, “but in all cases they are employed in ones and twos, a quite different approach to that taken 20 years ago”. By contrast, through the 1990s, V.Ships used two Vlasov Group ships to train groups of eight to 10 cadets at a time, with almost 400 trainees sailing on these vessels over the course of the decade.
V.Group human resources director Keith Parsons added that in the process, these cadet groups developed a loyalty to each other and an identification with the company that was to reap dividends in the succeeding years.
“With these groups of cadets from the 1990s, retention has been fantastic and many have risen to senior positions in the company, whether onshore or onboard.”
Mr Giorgi argued it was vital sufficient resources be pumped into initial training on board. This was particularly true at a time when shortages of qualified personnel had increased the risk of individuals being promoted before they were ready.
He believes there is considerable shipowner support for carrying larger complements of cadets, “but we cannot go ahead because the ships with capacity to carry them are just not there”.
He added: “It should be compulsory to have more facilities on board. We have to start discussing this now”.
Malcolm Willingale
Group Communications
V.Group
Tel: +44 207 489 0088
E-mail: Malcolm Willingale