More opportunities coming Indian seafarers’ way
Shipping companies which traditionally employ Chinese seafarers are increasingly turning to India to get their vessels manned. The latest to join the bandwagon is Europe’s leading shipping group - Investment Group Denmark A/S. Some of the group’s head honchos are in India looking for agents who could assist in manning their vessels with Indian seafarers. These include ID Wallem Shipmanagement Limited, I. D. Maritime Singapore and Investerings Gruppen Danmark.
“Historically we always had Chinese seafarers.” says M. S. Tiwana, Director of I. D. Maritime Singapore, which looks after the technical well-being of their fleet of 40 ships. “As we all know now Chinese are the biggest vessel owners and they depend on Chinese seafarers and in turn Chinese seafarers prefer to work on Chinese owned ships. With the Chinese seafarers’ pool being shared by Chinese owners we had to look for an alternate seafarers’ pool. That is how we also started banking on South Asian seafarers' pool and started taking Indians and we find it is a very successful innings with them on board.”
“Our superintendent in China faced difficulties in getting Chinese crew so we chose to take Indians,” Lars Christiansen, Technical Director of Investerings Gruppen Danmark. “We are not saying that we are leaving China. We like to work with the people who like to work with us. We have had lot of experience with Chinese crew and the way they work. Of course, they face the language barrier, but we feel that it is important to work with both the nationalities – Chinese, who we know well and now Indians, who we find a good asset. This is the combination that we want to operate with.”
Mik Stoustrup, M. D. of ID Wallem Shipmanagement Limited having a fleet of 37 ships on the other hand states, “We started employing Indians on four of our ships though in the beginning when we started in 2008 we have been operating with Chinese crew. But now that we have four vessels with Indian crew we plan to bring in four more in two months time and later another four for manning by Indian seafarers.”
He finds Indian seafarers very competent. However, the main issue is that Chinese prefer to work for Chinese ship owners. He finds that whenever an opportunity arises for the Chinese seafarers to work for Chinese ship owners they take that chance. As a result issues like culture and language is taken care of. “That is why it is getting more difficult to source Chinese crew these days,” he adds. “As it is there is a shortage of seafarers the world over.”
M. S. Tiwana describes “Indian seafarers as being proactive - a trait which we see down through the ranks”. He said, “Now that we have Indian manpower available to man our ships we have planned expansion and we will be taking on eight more ships into our fleet. On four of our vessels we have 90 per cent Indians and only 10 per cent Chinese and other nationalities. Also we try and stick to one galley with a common cuisine. This way we are able to best meet the requirement of a maximum of two nationalities that eat the same type of food. Food is a very important factor on board the ship. You may have a good crew but at the end of the day it is the cook who keeps everyone happy on board. So this very simple guidelines form the bases of our policy of having maximum of two nationalities.”
Narrating some of his experiences with Indian seafarers, Lars Christiansen explains, “Recently there was damage to the gangway of one of our ships. They had to carry out repairs to the gangway. When I went to visit the ship it so happens that the Indian chief officer met me for the first time and pointed out the things I had not noticed and surprised me with his in-depth knowledge and his advice on the best course of action to be taken. This is something I admire when the ship’s crew takes actual responsibility over and above their line of duty clearly indicating the crew’s proactive approach.
“I took active interest in observing how the crew made preparations and managed their work in a systematic manner. But it is not important where we take our crew from whether from India or China but what is more important is their professional competence.”
Relating another instance Christiansen gives an account of an Indian crew which had recently joined his ship which had called at a port to pick up cargo of iron ore fines which is prone to liquefaction. Unfortunately, the shipper and the charterer did not give much attention to the safety. The cargo was too moist. The crew went ashore and carried out inspection of the stock pile. They had the samples taken for inspection and came to the conclusion that carrying the cargo would be hazardous.
“Normally you don’t expect a chief engineer to know much about this aspect but this chief engineer amazed me with his knowledge and that he was well versed about such cargo and the possible danger it posed to the ship and crew,” says Christiansen. “First of all what is important is the safety and secondly it is the commercial aspect. If we do not take certain cargo we should be able to prove that it is not safe to carry it on board. For this you need to take a proper approach to tackle things in a right way. You need to work things out and often the charterers and shippers don’t necessarily do these things.”
Underscoring his contention he said that it is difficult situation and what counts is the crews’ ability is to challenge and make sure procedures are followed to justify refusing the cargo. There is also the International Maritime Dangerous Goods Code (IMDG) which provides guidelines on such matters he points out. Hence, his stand and that of the crew in this instance was on strong grounds.