maritime colleges ruining careers

KARACHI: The Ministry of Ports and Shipping is patronising a gimmick of around Rs 50 million a year just by ignoring private maritime colleges providing GP3 training to students aspiring to be professional seamen.
It has been learnt that these private colleges pay commissions to their agents for enticing young students for the costly GP3 training, commonly known as seaman training, despite the fact that some 500,000 seafarers are idle and have no jobs. Every year some 1,200 students pass out from these private colleges and each student has to pay around Rs 50,000 for the training, after which they still get no guarantee of jobs from the colleges.
The only thing they get after the said training is Seamen Service Book from the Government Shipping Office, and that is the start of their plight, as they have to constantly pester the recruiting agent for employment, source informed Pakistan Today.
There are five maritime colleges in Karachi, Prommete, Nautical Institute, Reycon, Maritime Training Centre, and Pakistan Maritime Academy, while one operates in Lahore, and all these colleges get their operations’ license from Ministry of Ports and Shipping director general office.
Seamen Union Secretary General Ameer Baloch said there were over 500,000 seafarers had no jobs, but the ministry was not doing anything to stop the malpractice.
“We have written several letters to the DG and the minister to stop training seafarers, but of no avail,” added. He said it was the responsibility of the Pakistan National Shipping Corporation (PNSC) to accommodate the trained seafarers, but the deteriorating condition of the corporation did not let it do so.
Pakistan Today tried contacting the Ports and Shipping DG for comments, but he did not attend repeated calls on his cell phone.