Sagarmala entails Rs 2000 crore maritime education project

The Union government has chalked out an ambitious plan entailing an investment of Rs 2,000 crore in maritime education as a part of the Rs 1,00,000 crore Sagarmala project.

Apart from the Union government the state governments as well as the private sector are expected to participate in the programme.

The chunk of the investment will be in setting up two maritime universities""one on the East Coast and the other on the West Coast.

The total cost of setting up the two universities is around Rs 8,00 crore. The plans come at a time when the latest survey by the latest Baltic and International Maritime Council International Shipping Fund (BIMCOISF) Manpower Update, which indicates massive global shortage of qualified officers in years to come. The survey suggests a shortfall of 23,000 officers by next year which is expected to double by 2010.

The shipping ministry officials said that the aim was to educate the seafarers on technical, commercial, financial and legal management aspects.

For this, four training ships would be acquired at a total cost of Rs 600 crore and two each would be installed on the eastern and western coast.

Moreover, Rs 200 crore would be spent on installing simulators and other state of art equipment to provide proper training.

The government envisages a recurring expenditure of Rs 40 crore annually over a period of ten years which would amount to total outlay of Rs 400 crore for the purpose.

The present training facility would be grossly under-equipped to meet the future demand for manpower calculated by the BIMCOISF survey.

At present, India has about 74 institutes to provide pre-sea training with the capacity to produce 4,575 officers annually.

At this rate India would be able to meet only 2.1 per cent of projected world demand of 4,32,000 officers by the next year and 10.32 per cent of world demand of 4,43,000 officers by 2010.

Apart from augmenting the training capacity through the two universities, the government also plans to agressively market the Indian trained officers and seafarers in the world market through road shows and other publicity initiatives.

The ministry believes that India has been losing out to countries like China and Philippines due the their marketing strategies.

The option of training fishermen and inducting them in Merchant Navy force is also being explored.

New areas like pleasure sailing, water sports, diving, fishing and catering would also be looked into.

As these areas are highly developed in rest of the world, India could export manpower, which has skills to deal with these areas.

The ministry feels that main constraints faced in exploiting this opportunity of generating greater employment in maritime sector and earning higher foreign exchange has been lack of private and public investment in this sector.

The government seeks to remedy this by bearing 60 per cent of the total outlay of Rs 2,000 crore.

The government, however, expects the private parties including ship owners to contribute Rs 400 crore for the purpose and the recurring expenditure of Rs 40 crore per year to be generated internally.