Shortage of navigators and fisheries technologists We are seeing an alarming increase in the average age of the sea officers in Greenland. Royal Greenland’s crew manager became aware of the problem and contacted the Employer Association of Greenland’s (GA) interprofessional committee to discuss the situation. This has led to cooperation between all the shipping lines, and strategic efforts are now being made to enable young people to start a maritime education and training. - In cooperation with GA and the other shipping lines, we have now launched a strategy targeted at young people, trying to get them to start a maritime education and training. It has become more difficult to recruit young people with officer potential, who have even started some sort of training. The skipper school has been closed, and wasn’t doing that well beforehand. About 15 years have passed without anything happening in this area, says Christian Laursen, Crew Manager in Royal Greenland. Older officers retiring - The officers who qualified in the 1980s and who started working on board the vessels are getting older and are starting to retire. The skipper school was doing well in the 1980s and 1990s, and it was situated in Nuuk. But then it moved to Paamiut, and it started going downhill quite fast until it finally closed in 2004/2005. The number of navigators being educated has been declining from year to year, and it is quite alarming. - The skipper school has finally started up again here in Nuuk and is fortunately attracting a lot of applicants, which is good. However, it will be some time before they are ready to join our trawlers as officers. - Admission to the skipper school requires fairly good language and mathematical skills, so our strategy involves focusing on young people with an upper secondary exam (GU). Then we can also be pretty sure that they will complete the course. They must have been to sea for 18 months before they can be admitted to the skipper school. Royal Greenland and the other companies have agreed to allocate places so that applicants can work on the vessels even though they are totally green, and even if they have never been to sea before. Consequently, there are at least 20 or 30 places for young people on the vessels, which are ready to welcome them. - In the past, people often thought that it was just a question of jumping on board and then your career would take off, but that is not the case at all. Building up the necessary competencies takes a long time. But because we believe in it and because we are able to take them on, we can help educate these young people. But we need youngsters who are keen and who demonstrate that they really want to pursue this career. Taking on the right people also makes it easier to keep the motivation up, says Christian Laursen. How will you recruit young candidates? - We will participate in education roadshows that tour the coast; here, Mika Heilmann from the crew department will try to establish contact with the young GU students. We have also talked about going round to the various colleges and schools when they organise career days. We will bring along our own young officers and let them give talks about what the job is like. 4 NAVIGATIO NO. 2 2014
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