Pioneer chairman of the interim management board of the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA), Alhaji Tijjani Ramalan has added his voice to the on going review of the Cabotage Act.
Ramalan told Shipping Position Weekly that one of the areas that should be reviewed is the waiver clause which he described as been tilted against the nation’s pool of seafarers.
According to him, the implementation of waiver clause gave foreign ship owners the leeway to subject indigenous seafarers to perpetual unemployment, which according to him could be avoided if the implementation was more nationalistic.
The former NIMASA boss who is also the pioneer executive chairman of both the Joint Dock Labour Industrial Council (JODLIC) and the Joint Maritime Labour Industrial Council (JOMALIC) faulted the blanket granting of waivers especially inn the area of manpower.
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Arguing that companies that are taking advantage of the waiver clause should be compelled to give something inn return, Alhaji Ramalan stressed that “I think there should be an amendment where waivers are tied to training, because I can’t just understand why people are given wavers every year and there is no provision for training”.
Continuing, he stated that “there should be the need for waivers to be tied to training so that if a ship owner comes this year to say I need two manning waivers, we should be able to say okay, take two Nigerians so that you will not come back next year and say again that you do not have qualified Nigerians because you have trained the two Nigerians that we gave you.
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