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Union Minister for Ports, Shipping & Waterways and AYUSH, Shri Sarbananda Sonowal has said that the Government is striving to improve the quality of Indian Seafarers and make their life comfortable. Speaking at the release of Navik Jeevan and launch of Online Competency based Examination through VC mode in New Delhi today, he informed that this is happening for the first time in the world, and assured to work for development of shipping, ports seafarers training, and ultimately emerging as a world leader in the maritime sector. The Minister recalled the vision of the Prime Minister, which has been embodied in the Maritime India Vision 2030 launched by him in March 2021.
Shri Sonowal said, India is one of the largest seafarer supplying nation and our seafarers are in great demand internationally. He expressed hope that the stakeholders will take appropriate measures to address the issues raised in the report.
Acknowledging the increased focus on the human element in shipping, the Directorate General of Shipping took the initiative to conduct exhaustive research to study the issues related faced by seafarers. The project was done by Indian National Shipowners’ Association and funded by Maritime Training Trust and covered more than 5000 respondents including nearly 100 female seafarers. The analysis of the survey data, published in this report, Navik Jeevan -A Survey on the life of Indian seafarers and Pre-sea students, highlighted some of very important and critical issues, related to employment, training, discrimination, harassment, fatigue, stress, motivation, happiness, safety, environment, working on board etc., where the shipping companies, maritime training institutes and the administration would need to make some improvements.
The Online Certificate of Competency Examination is a fully digital Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning powered online examination system which uses remote proctoring and powerful security and surveillance tools built to ensure a fair, transparent and secure examination system.
Addressing the gathering the Director General of Shipping, Shri Amitabh Kumar said, we are launching the first ever written examination for certificate of competency using a Remote Digital Proctoring mechanism. We are certainly amongst the first in the world for any leading maritime nation to introduce such a system.
Dr. Sanjeev Ranjan, Secretary Ports, Shipping and Waterways, in his address stated that one of the objectives of the Maritime India Vision 2030 was to ‘Digitize and upgrade CoC assessment mechanism of seafarers by 2022’, including End-End Digitization of CoC assessment.