When Differentship MET Common Sense, Part One.

(The first of a two article series on the major problems, and some possible solutions, to the present poor quality of Maritime Education and Training- MET- in India)

pic courtesy commonsensedogtraining.com




What are the reasons why watch keeping standards are falling at sea?
It is easy to answer the question instinctively, rattle off the usual reasons, and be close to the truth. Also far enough from it.


Short manned ships leading to overworked and fatigued officers. An explosion of administrative and statutory paperwork. Lower academic competence compared to trainees twenty or thirty years ago. Lower levels of commitment all round. Fallout of fewer entrants seeing shipping as a career and not a stopgap arrangement. Poor training and poorer planning. Truncated pre sea training. Poor on board training. Impractical distance learning programmes. One could go on, and one would be essentially correct. One would be almost right.


Almost, but not quite.


Recent opportunity to look at the training world at closer quarters than I am used to, however, threw up some interesting realities. Meshing this with what I have seen in practice aboard modern ships with multinational crews has made me understand a little better the drivers behind each component in the puzzle. I will begin with Pre Sea training. Even ignoring the much maligned IGNOU course in India, the usual alternative: three months Pre Sea, a year and a half or so at sea plus six months of college before appearing for examinations cannot work well, I feel. It is lopsided and weighted against practical learning and we are promoting feel good degrees at the expense of operational safety and professional efficiency.


I will give my opinion, as usual, on what could be better options to the present quagmire next week; meanwhile, here are the most significant reasons why I think the present system is not producing excellence:


The explosion of unethical training institutes: : Barring notable exceptions, many MET institutes run on the poor business model of profits above all else. And so they make elaborate and unrealistic promises to raw recruits. They degrade their own brand by not investing enough in the future and by employing ad hoc (and quite poorly paid) faculty without much examination of the faculty’s knowledge or ability to deliver quality education. This malaise extends to both pre sea and post sea training courses, as any of us who have suffered the revalidation and upgradation process will testify. I call this a poor business model because excellence is far removed from the reality here, and so is customer (trainee and ship owner) satisfaction. Poor facilities and faculty do not make for good education, whatever tie ups one orchestrates with institutions in India or abroad for marketing purposes.


Poor Shipmanagement company practices: Somewhat akin to shady MET institutes, many shipmanagement companies use training as a cash cow while flushing quality down the drain. Billing shipowners exorbitantly for ‘company sponsored courses’ may be fine. Conducting those courses poorly, cheaply, with poor faculty and in a hurried and ill conceived fashion (often clubbing them with joining ship formalities to the detriment of training) is not. The clear message sent out to everybody is that this is not a serious exercise. It is just another brick in the wall.


Lack of long term commitment from the trainees: Recently, a straw poll I took of a fresh faced pre sea class suggested that a third of them were planning to quit sailing within a decade: this when they had not even stepped on board a ship yet! In addition, less than a third saw themselves sailing for most of their professional lives. Where, then, is the motivation? Where do you think these recruits will spend energy in the near future: in increasing professional competence or in dreaming about how to find a way out of what is an occupation but not a profession?


Lack of committed trainers ashore:After navigating at sea for a few decades, I find that, as an educator, I have to spend considerable time preparing to take basic navigation classes. Simply put, some of my principles are rusty. An easy way out would be to stick to the course material; the problem with that, of course, is that teaching poorly or in a blinkered fashion results in students being, well, poorly trained. Another challenge is that the navigational syllabus for a three month pre sea navigational course (remember that this is just one subject amongst many that trainees are taught) has to be particularly well compiled and executed. Basic mathematical concepts and navigational skills cannot be compressed or taught willy nilly. I have to spend quite some time figuring out what sequence of topics would work best, keeping in mind that some trainees are not quite up there with mathematical or language understanding skills. One has to take care not to do a slipshod job of it. I can well imagine a scenario when an educator just phones his classes in, so to speak, after a few months or so. We have all seen that happen too often.


Inappropriate Distance Learning Programmes (DLP) at sea: Considering that the trainees will spend approximately half the time on a ship as compared to their seniors a generation ago, and considering that shipboard watchkeeping procedures, equipment, regulations and operations are now infinitely more complex (and shortmanned), a trainee concentrating on his DLP schedule on board instead of practical stuff is clearly being poorly trained. At sea, I have barred cadets’ DLP study on the bridge (a common practice) on many a ship and stressed practical watchkeeping instead. I feel quite strongly that Masters must ensure that cadets use the truncated time they have on board today to learn the practices of seamanship rather than the theory that a DLP tends to stress. There is enough time for academics in the months that they are slated to spend in college Post Sea. Unfortunately, unless the so called DLP training programmes are revised, this problem cannot be completely addressed; in any event, one cannot learn navigation or ROR through a correspondence course! Present DLP schedules require too much time to be spent on books and notes in air conditioned accommodation and not nearly enough time out in the salt air.


Poor onboard training: This, in my view, is a biggie, and I have been as guilty as anybody else while at sea here. Firstly, what senior officers often fail to appreciate is that general academic competence of trainees is often lower than they were, say, twenty years ago, simply because the people who do better academically do not come out to see anymore. Additionally, the trainee has been sent on board with just a smattering of knowledge after three months of a Pre Sea mish mash. He is just a shade better equipped than the fresh ‘direct entry cadet’ of yesterday, while shipboard systems have become infinitely more complex. Another huge drawback in the system of training on board is this: almost all of it is devoid of any explanation or teaching. Result? We are not passing on the core concepts of seamanship to the next generation on ships anymore.


The ‘do this’, ‘take a compass error’ and ‘what is that ship doing?’ style of training was perhaps more appropriate for a time when crews were homogenous, when senior cadets taught juniors the ropes or when officers had the tradition (and time too, but is that just an excuse today?) of passing on knowledge to the young. Alas, not anymore. Multinational officers and single cadet ships have ensured that the trainee is on his own at a stage of his career when he needs mentorship the most.


Poor officer motivation on board: Another biggie. For example, is an Indian officer motivated enough to teach a Filipino cadet? Will the Master or Chief Engineer take some time to devise an appropriate practical programme for a trainee? Will he identify officers competent and willing to teach these youngsters? Will training be conducted as part of a routine and a job that must be done well or will it inevitably fall by the wayside on the hectic ships of today? These critical questions must be answered, because they go right to the bone of the problem.


Fortunately, as I will detail in an article next week, there are solutions. All that is required is the usual (and rare) common sense and commitment. We at Differentship Management have devised an operational business model that is workable, sustainable and promotes excellence in MET. We will roll it out next week for your scrutiny.


Meanwhile, I request you all to desist from calling what generally passes for marine education and training as quality education. That rose should be called by another name: one that does not smell as sweet.

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In the wake of the Maersk Alabama, worrying signs

Is it time to link Somalia to the wider war on terrorism?


In the recent past, this magazine has published a fair bit on the links between Somali pirates and Al Qaeda. Events in the last few days have reinforced these concerns. Now that the drama surrounding the Maersk Alabama hijacking and Capt. Richard Phillips rescue is over, one question that begs to be asked is, ‘What does the shooting down of the three pirates and the statements coming out of Washington and Somalia mean for piracy in the region? Has the game changed?’


Some of it undoubtedly has. Even as the Alabama saga was playing out its final act, a US Congressman on a visit to Somalia escaped a mortar attack on his aircraft as it was preparing to take off from Mogadishu. Although diplomats maintain that there is no connection between the two incidents, others are not so sanguine. Another less publicised recent event has added to the uncertainty: a new maritime boundary agreement between Somalia and Kenya, one that has been severely criticised in Somalia with many saying that the government has signed away Somali territorial waters to Kenya, a Western ally. As we know, given the exploitation and degradation of the Somali coastline mainly by Western countries, this is a sensitive issue.


In Washington, President Obama said, after the Alabama incident, that he is determined to stop piracy off Somalia. "We are going to have to continue to work with our partners to prevent future attacks. We have to continue to be prepared to confront them when they arise. And we have to ensure that those who commit acts of piracy are held accountable for their crimes," he said, without giving any details as to how he intends to do so.


Meanwhile, in Somalia, some pirates claim that they will seek revenge for the pirate killings in the Alabama incident. Should we be more concerned about the safety of the 250 odd hostage seafarers of many nationalities who remain captive there? I hope not: although we all know that ransoms are actually paid for ships and cargoes and not really for the crews, killing hostages would, from the point of view of the pirates, generate too much heat and threaten to kill the golden goose.


Other reports from Mogadishu say that militant Islamists, many of whom hitherto said they would stop piracy, are now calling the pirates ‘national heroes’ after the shooting down of three pirates by US snipers during Capt. Phillip’s rescue. Hassan Turki calls them ‘helpers’ in the Islamist’s war against the West. Turki, who is the leader of the Islamist ‘Ras Kamboni Brigade’, has recently joined other hardline groups to form the Hisbul Islam (Party of Islam) in Somalia. Referring to the long standing Somali complaint that Western countries have exploited Somali fishing grounds and dumped nuclear waste off the Somali coastline, Turki called the pirates ‘religious fighters’ because they are fighting these Christian countries, and said that Somali piracy had its roots in the movement against this exploitation.


True, the Hisbul does not speak with one voice; a part of the organisation is pro government. However, the other faction is hardline and is linked to Al Shabaab, Somalia’s most powerful Islamist group. This faction blames the Somali government for being a puppet of Western powers, and is accused by many of having links with Al Qaeda. Many also point out to the fact of terrorist training camps within Somalia and past statements made by Al Qaeda supporting piracy as extremely dangerous portents for shipping in the region: an area through which much of the world’s oil passes.


Meanwhile, insurance companies, who thought ships were quite safe if they stayed far away from the Somali coast, are revisiting this assumption as the pirates’ strike range increases dramatically, thanks to the use of ‘mother ships’, either their own or hijacked ones. Shipping companies, already hard hit by the ongoing financial meltdown, find themselves in a difficult situation. Some had decided to avoid the Gulf of Aden and the Suez Canal and go around the Cape of Good Hope instead, but with Somali pirates hitting ships hundreds of miles to the South and East of Somalia, this option seems meaningless. Besides costs connected with days and weeks of extra steaming, insurance premia are rising substantially for this region too.


I believe that the international community will be forced to link the piracy issue with the war on terror sooner rather than later. Understandably, the US, mired in conflicts in Iraq and AfPak and hamstrung by the financial crisis, is perhaps not too keen to declare this openly. I also believe that there is a clear terrorist strategy to widen the conflict by threatening to choke global shipping and trade. The war zone already extends from Afghanistan across Pakistan, Iraq and all the way to the Turkish border, with Iran an explicit player in Iraq. This war zone is now being extended by the pirates/terrorists Southwards past Yemen and the Horn of Africa and into the millions of miles of the Indian Ocean.


It therefore suits the terrorist strategists to have an unstable Somalia locked in conflict. The rest of the world will have to redefine the Somali piracy issue and call it by its true name sooner rather than later.

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Peripheral Vision: The Somali sideshow

The Bollywood ‘item girl’, so called because she appears titillatingly clad in a song and dance number and thereafter disappears from the movie forever, has some things in common with the maritime industry. Both hit the headlines sporadically, and both hit them for the wrong reasons. Or so I thought until recently.


I now think that there may actually be some advantages to the shipping industry from the headlines generated by Somali piracy. Granted that the recent coverage of the Somali crisis in the Western media (including the conservative Economist) is precipitated by (gasp) American ships and nationals having being held hostage. Regardless, it is not often that you hear, within the span of a week, the US President talking about a resolve to end piracy and the US Secretary of State bringing out a four point programme to fight it.


The disadvantages of the media coverage of issues like piracy (or criminalisation or oil spills, for that matter) are well known; the reputation of the industry as a dirty and shady one obviously gets exaggerated by the fact that it never gets any positive publicity, and, indeed, does not even seriously attempt to promote it. However, the main advantage of all the media spotlight on piracy is this: the average Joe on the street may now understand much better why shipping is such a critical industry to global trade and how ships and seafarers are almost indispensible to his daily life. Because, if the security of shipping lanes is not critical, why is the Somali issue now being described as a ‘global crisis’? Why are the navies of the most powerful countries in the world out there? And why is the President of the most powerful country in the world personally involved?


If Joe finally realises this criticality of the maritime industry, it can only be a good thing. Much like the starlet in the movie, bad publicity may turn out to be better for us than no publicity at all.


Meanwhile, in the Philippines and in a heartening sign far away from all the drama in the Indian Ocean where their compatriots form the largest number of hostages held by pirates, there is no let up in Filipino sailors wanting to go out to sea. The country claims to supply a third of the world’s seafarers; recruiters in Manila say that, with higher pay on offer, there is no shortage of mariner availability even for Somali waters. Economics and human resilience prevails once again. The desire to provide for one’s family overcomes all else.
Anybody who has been fortunate enough to visit a Filipino seafarer’s rural home, as I have once, knows how much respect a seafarer gets in those closely knit communities. This respect even extends to a large city like Manila, where it is not uncommon for an earning seafarer to look after entire families of distant relatives who are earning low local wages or are unemployed.


One result of all the positive attention seafaring gets out there is this: at the end of 2008, the Trade Union Congress of the Philippines revealed that Filipino sailors had sent home a record 2.393 billion dollars home in the first nine months of 2008: a whopping 43 percent increase over the previous year. Staggering figures, indeed.


It is symptomatic of the low importance given to seafaring in India that we cannot produce similar (or even remotely reliable) statistics: we do not even have a reliable mechanism to compute the number of serving Indian seafarers in the global fleet. Seafaring as a profession is ignored by the public in India and is far from a profession of choice for most of the young. I will agree that even rudimentary proficiency in the English language can be a minus in India for somebody who wants to go out to sea from within a rural setting, but the argument that this is the main reason for officer shortage (or the decreasing global market share of Indian ratings) is disingenuous. The fact is that with minimal government and private involvement towards attracting youngsters into the industry and a lack of willingness on the part of seafarer employees to go the extra mile during their contracts, India is losing out big time. If we do not address this quickly, the results will be ominous and obvious. Ships will continue to sail; they will just do so with fewer Indians on board.


Far away from the Philippines, two news items from the US caught my eye recently. In the first, the New York Times reported, in a small two line aside in an article on piracy, that Filipino sailors on one ship had thrown tomatoes at pirate skiffs in a failed attempt to repel them. In the second, the Massachusetts Maritime Academy in the US says it will now train its cadets in small arms and handguns because many merchant ships may carry arms against pirates in the future.


I think that one fallout of Somali piracy will probably be, in the near future, that any small group of criminals (and larger groups of terrorists) anywhere in the world will realise that it does not take much to hijack merchant ships for staggering ransoms. A boat, a couple of grenades, an assault rifle or two and perhaps an RPG thrown in is enough to walk away with a couple of million dollars in tax free cash. An excellent return on investment, as the good folk in Puntland will verify.


The industry will, in response, have to revisit the debate on the possibility of arming crews before this threat widens. Although I do not know which way the debate will go, I do know this: Much like a country that cannot or will not defend itself, a ship which will not do so is nothing.


I have, suddenly, another awkward thought as I write this piece. Whatever happened to the ISPS code in the midst of all this Somali mayhem? Are we still peddling it, and if so, why? Kindly be patient while I summarise events for clarity: Today, millions of square miles of the ocean are threatened by armed criminals with known (and stated) links to terrorists. Tens of ships, boats and yachts are hijacked for months on end with a couple of hundred sailors held hostage at any given moment. This is the kind of stuff the ISPS code was supposed to address, one would have thought. It has, obviously and somewhat spectacularly, failed to do so. Even if the ISPS was not really supposed to address this, as many will claim, the fact is that piracy is a huge security threat to global shipping, more so if I throw terrorism in the mix. It is just a matter of time before, as an example, somebody decides to blow up a VLCC or ram it into a breakwater somewhere; it seems so simple to do so. Why, then, is nobody doing something about modifying or repealing the useless ISPS code? Is it because admitting to impotence is too embarrassing?


I suggest that we should at least add a line or two to the Code. Something like, “The ISPS code will obviously cease to be in effect once the vessel is hijacked. It will resume being in force after the ransom has been paid, or as soon as is practicable thereafter.”

“And it shall apply only to the survivors of the hijack, if any.”
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The Numbers Game

The IMO Secretary General is pushing the ‘Go to Sea’ campaign once again, talking about the continuing shortage of seafarers, the industry’s poor public relations profile and the ongoing need to train professionals for the industry. Industry think tanks have more or less echoed the IMO’s statistics, bolstering opinions with alarming sounding numbers of officer shortage projections, which, according to them, will continue unfettered despite the equally alarming projections of global scrapping of ships, cancellations of new builds and layups. If one can believe these figures, the pictured shortage of seagoing officers remains in the tens of thousands over the next few years. Not just that, but these experts say that present shortages will continue despite shrinking fleets.


With all due respect, I would like to know the basis on which these figures are calculated. We are talking about huge numbers, and something doesn’t tally here. For example, if I were to assume that there an ongoing shortage today, then I must logically assume this too: that last year, when the boom was still apparently on and the bubble had not yet burst, a significant number of the many more ships in service then were unable to sail because they did not have qualified personnel on board.


We know that did not happen. Industry projections today, therefore, smell a little bit to me. I suspect that at least some have been pulled out of a hat, thence my request: can we define the hat with more transparency and clarity, please?


If I were charitable, I would think, perhaps, that the industry’s stress on training and continuing, even increasing, the intake of young blood into shipping in today’s turbulence is a realisation of what we did wrong in the eighties. I may think that ship management mandarins have now realised that the decimation of training and fresh induction in the last bust resulted in terrible shortages of skilled and educated officers later. I may agree that these folk are determined not to repeat their blunders this time around; thus these numbers.


If I continued to be charitable, I would assume that the IMO, other international bodies and think tanks, private and public satraps and the miscellaneous people who influence shipping policy have no vested interests or hidden agendas, and that their only imperatives are altruistic and for the well being of the industry as a whole. Maybe I would even accept, in a moment of weakness, that they have the projection of maritime manpower requirements down to a finely honed art, and that their figures have thus great sanctity, integrity and purpose.


Unfortunately, based on the last couple of decades of experience, I do not think so. Even worse, I suspect the motives of more than a few participants in the officer statistics being hung out to dry by everybody today.


A simple question: What figures of shortages would we get if shipowners were forced to offer permanent employment to all the officers that they henceforth employed? Would they want to induct the numbers of officers now stated as ‘short’ if they had to pay those wages throughout the year? If they had to promote mainly from within? Pay statutory employee provident funds and add on benefits like insurances and others that, in some form or another, are applicable in most countries in the world to permanent employees? Would we, in that eventuality, get similar officer shortage figures from the industry worldwide, or would there be a marked decrease there?


I suspect I know the answer to that. The fact is that shipping operates on the paradigm that its seagoing employees are daily wage earners. By extension, it wants the cheapest labour that it can hire and fire at any point of time; it always has, and there is nothing too much wrong with it. The industry is hardly unique, in this imperfect world, in wanting to do so.


The problem becomes when, as has happened in India in the past at least once, attempts are made to flood the market with labour without thought for the future, or with the main intention of lowering wages by oversupply. The fact is that a contractual system means that unused labour does not cost the industry anything. Additionally, the long term employability of labour inducted has always been the least of the industry’s concerns, as is illustrated by the plight of a batch mate I ran into in South Bombay in the eighties: working for the largest shipowner in India, this Second Mate had been asked to ‘come back after six years’. The six years would be unpaid, of course.


What the industry needs is not statistics per se, but figures that have some quality and sanctity. It needs statistics that are transparent and do not give the impression of being conjured out of thin air or for the wrong reasons. In any case, where did these international figures come from when we do not even have, in the absence of national bodies in major officer supplying countries like India, reliable national databases of active incountry seafarers?


In the absence of such core tools, all we have is a pendulum loaded with numbers swinging from one extreme to the other. It is not surprising, therefore, that we oscillate (and vacillate) between oversupply and shortage. This may not seem such a big deal to those of us ashore; it does not affect us personally. We also assume that supply will come from somewhere this time around too, including Africa and China, which seem to be flavours of the future judging from recent reports.


The reality is that it is, actually, a big deal. We may not care for our officers long term; hell, some of us may not even care much for the industry long term (provided, obviously, that it does not implode before we retire). Nevertheless, for those of us who do care, please consider this: Even after getting it wrong in the eighties, we continued to attract youngsters into what was, then, a much more preferred profession. That paradigm does not apply today as we struggle with profile issues and are unable to attract suitable talent in the numbers required. Therefore, if we get it wrong now, and if we attract youngsters with misleading figures or under false pretences, then we risk swinging the pendulum so far out that it may not swing back. If our officers face huge unemployment a few years down the road because we pushed oversupply trying to get cheaper labour that then became unemployed and destitute, we may become the pariahs of the employment market for a generation or two.


Layoffs occur across the world in all industries from time to time. However, there is a price to be paid in most businesses. Sometimes the price is financial, with severance salaries and such costs. Sometimes the price is even higher, in the loss of goodwill and in upheaval within businesses. However, we in shipping disregard all this, because laying off daily wage earners does not seem to cause much upheaval. Who really cares if a seafarer is not recalled after a contract? This false sense of security also causes the industry to sometimes publish loose figures of staffing needs, in my view. There is an underlying ethos that it does not matter if we get these statistics wrong, even hugely wrong. There are no comebacks. There is no downside. There is no price to be paid by any of us.


Except, plainly, by the seafarers.

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