Mkpoikana Udoma
Port Harcourt — The Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board, NCDMB says it has conducted aptitude tests and interviews for prospective candidates that would participate in the 2nd phase of its Cadet Training Programme.
The Training Selection Exercise was held over the weekend at Charkin Maritime and Offshore Safety Limited, PortHarcourt, Rivers State.
60 candidates participated in the written text and they were nominated from the Nigerian Content Joint Qualification System, NOGICJQS, the oil and gas industry repository for skills and capacities.
40 candidates would be selected at the end of the interview session to participate in the Sea-time training programme.
The nominees are graduates of Marine Engineering and Nautical Sciences.
In 2019, the Board engaged Messrs Charkin to provide Practical Sea-Time for 20 Nigerian Cadets on -board Foreign Going vessels.
The programme was conceived to address a yawning skill gap in the existing Nigerian seafarers training programme.
Detailed skill gap analysis conducted by the Board had revealed that most young Nigerian seafarers, some of whom were trained at maritime schools in Nigeria, still lacked the mandatory one year sea-time experience, partly because of the prohibitive cost of the programme, in the region of US$20,000-US$30,000 per candidate.
The lack of the requite qualification disqualified many Nigerian seafarers from securing employments, thus perpetuating the engagement of expatriates on oil and gas vessels.
So far NCDMB has trained 20 cadets on Bernard Schulte’s ship across the world in the phase 1, in partnership with Charkin Maritime and Offshore Safety Limited and the latest selection test is for the Phase2 of the programme.
