Capt Thomas Kemewerigha (President, Nigerian Merchant Navy and Water Transport Senior Staff) is perhaps the busiest union leader as far as the maritime sector is concerned. By virtue of his position, he is usually difficult to pin down as he criss-crosses Lagos and the Niger Delta superintending the welfare of his members. He told me about the plight of seafarers; especially in the hands of indigenous seafarers.
What is your perception of the average welfare package of the Nigerian seafarers?
Nigerian seafarers are the least paid in the whole world, it was based on this that NIMASA and other stakeholders including ISAN and the unions decided to fashion out a benchmark for seafarers; both at the offshore operations and the coastal trade. The NJIC has gone far and they are almost at the concluding stage, so we are all looking on NIMASA to round it up and see how the implementation will commence. Besides that, it is very true that we have the so called expatriates working with Nigerians on board the same vessel and in most cases handling the same position and doing the same job, the records even show that most Nigerians are doing better than the expatriates who are paid in hard currencies, their take home pay can not be compared with that of Nigerians.
You mentioned NIMASA, is it possible for NIMASA to fix wages for seafarers?
NIMASA is the custodian of the welfare of seafarers; they have a department for that purpose which is the maritime labour department. We are not even saying that they should pay exactly what the expatriates are being paid, but NIMASA is being guided by the IMO and the ITF benchmark, you and I know that the ITF is the apex body of all seafaring institutions in the world, when expatriates draw their contracts from Europe, Latin America and so on, they are bound by the ITF rules, what we are saying here is that NIMASA has decided to get ISAN, the multinationals, the fishing sector and the union to come out with an acceptable condition of service, that is, a benchmark whereby no existing company in this our country will pay below that. It has got to an advanced stage and we are at the verge of coming out with a final report for implementation, we are waiting for that. The union spearheaded this course because it was very glaring that the seafarers were not getting anything commensurate to their effort, I must tell you that most of the indigenous ship owners, (about 80% of them) are owing their crew about six to nine months salaries, how do you expect such a Nigerian to survive? No Nigerian can survive under that condition. When you talk, they (ISAN) will tell you they don’t have jobs, if you don’t have jobs now, when you were getting it what did you do with your profits, if you don’t have jobs, it is the seafarers that suffer, but when you have jobs they don’t benefit from it. I don’t know if they ever thought it wise for them to ask how the seafarers who are working for them on board their vessels live because of non payment of salaries. But finally we thank God that today that they are getting jobs because some of us know why they were not getting jobs.
Why were they not getting jobs?
They were not getting because their vessels were substandard and they do not meet the international requirement in the oil industry. The oil industry is not subject to Nigeria alone, the international communities are also involved and we have international regulatory body like the IMO and others When they are giving you jobs, they look at the benchmark internationally before they give you, we know most of them (ISAN) have substandard ships. When other countries in Europe were phasing out single haul vessels, they where being shipped into Nigeria, so it is not new, but we thank God today that they are also getting jobs because they have started acquiring vessels that meet international standard, now they are still owing salaries and the union does not want any confrontation because we know the state of the economy, so we are trying to get around it.
There are allegations that most of the manning agents are not registered and that is why we have fake and jobless seafarers?
One thing that is peculiar to Nigeria is to identify problems, another thing is to solve these problems, even when they are trying to solve it, the implementation becomes another major problem. Everybody knows about the issue of fake manning agents, NIMASA labour department knows about it too, recently they constituted a committee to come up with the way forward in getting registered manning agents. I was fortunate to be a member of that committee, but the bottom line is that as of today, no fake manning agent can be arrested even when identified because we are still waiting for NIMASA which promised to place an advert in a national daily to the manning agents in general, and to highlight the need for them to update their registration, the committee went as far as reducing the bond from N10million to N1million so as to encourage Nigerians, they promised to place an advert in the national dailies and that in the advert, all those who have not complied will be counted as defaulters. Here I am today we are still waiting for NIMASA to call us back that it is time to go into action, that is one thing. The ship owners have invested so much money to in acquire a vessel, even though they don’t know about it and they employed one or two people (shore wise) to manage the vessel for them. Those are the ones in the position to know the safety measures, so if you are a seafarer and you engage fake manning agents and crews that are not qualified and certified by international regulations; you are endangering the life of others. NIMASA has so much to do and it has started so well, but from all indications, it is like they don’t want to proceed to the next stage.
Recently, some ISAN members have started acquiring vessels, is that a sign that the Cabotage Vessel Financing Fund is already being put to use?
I share the same view with you, but if we are to go by the fact and correct our wrong, they should know that the fund was meant for a purpose and they should be transparent in its disbursement. I expected NIMASA to have started publishing the names of beneficiaries if they have started giving, we want to know who and who have benefited from that fund because not everybody have access to the papers, it is a public investment so they should go to the press and publish it from day one; they should tell us who and who are benefiting so that we would know who have used the money for the purpose they collected it. Remember, we once made the same mistake the last time when Nigerians who are not even core professionals in the trade, who don’t belong to the shipping trade but who because they belong to the powers that be were given access to the funds and they used it for businesses that have nothing to do with maritime and when the time for repayment came, many of them could not pay. We made a lot of noise and wrote letters to the appropriate quarters, but up till today we were not replied as to who paid back, so we want the current regime of NIMASA to publish the list of people who are collecting this money so that tomorrow, they too will be able to raise their heads high that: yes we gave out the money and so and so person collected from it, people will actually monitor it, interest groups will monitor those collecting the money to make sure that they are using it for the said purpose. But, when they give it out without notifying the public, we wont know who have collected and who have not for the interest of the Nigerian seafarers because these money are meant to build up our Cabotage trade and our buy more vessels in order to employ more Nigerians, so we are also watching.
Why do we have so many fake maritime training schools?
I have discussed with different sets of people, yes tomorrow they will come and tell you we have about 23 maritime training institutions and that they are all accredited and certified. There was a programme which we had at Badagry where I made it clear that there are so many two- bedroom flat maritime institutions in this country, when parents who want better life for their children see adverts and forms they will think they are going in the right direction by going into a profession they know nothing about. It is not the responsibility of NIMASA to make sure that these schools are accredited because we have a national body that is in charge of accrediting technical schools, that is the National Board for Technical Education, the bottom line is that Nigerians who ought to better their life are there wasting the resources of their parents, they don’t get the best, so when they come out they cannot cope with what it takes to be in that profession. One thing is to go to school and get the basic certificate, another thing is to be able to operate professionally, because we can not collate the number of institutions that are accredited today, we cannot even sit down and programme how we are going to place their products on board vessels. More worrisome is the fact that most of these youths attend the two- bedroom institutions that are not recognized, that do not have what it takes to be a maritime institution. So, when these people first come out, they have no where to go, but they want to belong. I want to believe that it is those class of people are the ones that groom people into fake certification and all that; because they went to a school, they cannot continue from there, but they want to acquire the certificate to push themselves into the system and since they cannot get in, what do they do? They go to the fakes. We have cried out to one or two people who are directly involved or who are in charge of certification in NIMASA that we should not only wait for those concerned to monitor these people because the end will tell on the maritime sector. We should go a step further by identifying these schools and making sure that they are no longer in existence and if they want to be in existence we should encourage them to meet the standard internationally so that the more schools we have, the better for the sector and the nation.
What is your take on the recent kidnap of an NPA pilot in Calabar?
The pilot is employed by somebody. Those who hijack vessels do not do it because they want to take the seafarers on board even though they are the last resort and they suffer it all at the end of the day. High jacking and kidnapping takes place because they know the society and the class those people they are high jacking belong to; those who are kidnapped are not the ones that will pay the ransom. In most cases when a vessel is high jacked, the owner of the vessel may be in London on holidays but the fact that his vessel has been high jacked with every crew who have their own lives to live, when he is asked for ransom he pays, he is not paying for himself because he is in London somewhere resting. So, the pilot who was kidnapped makes no difference, after all NPA has money so they can as well cough it out when the need arises, so that’s what is happening.
The incidence also casts doubt on security on the nation’s waters….
Which security are you talking about? Is it in this Nigeria or another one? Look at your seaports and your airports which are two strategic positions and the gateway to any nation, as of today how many Nigerians control your airports, but in the seaport they know that the Nigerian Ports Authority are ordinary caretakers, they have no business in the port. So those who are managing the port, are they Nigerians? Lets start from this point; are those managing the gateway to your economy today Nigerians? The core managers are not Nigerians, do you know who and who they are bringing in as employees of their establishments, we have not thought of that, they brought in expatriates to manage our seaport operations; do you know the identities of those coming and the countries that they are coming from? Let’s look at it from the aspect of the Nigerian Navy; we have cried out severally. Before we were born, defence budget has always been the highest in this country. In other advanced countries, they also take cognizance of the other sectors, but in Nigeria defence is always the highest, yet a ship was highjacked at the Lagos anchorage and the Ghanaian Navy intercepted it, check the different between Lagos anchorage and the Wilmer point and the main base where we have NNS Aradu and others. We have held different workshops and seminars and the Navy was opportuned to be there and we heard what their representative said. When the fishing trawlers started having problems in this country, series of discussions have been held between the trawler owners and the Navy, to no avail. The bottom line is that the navy today is not equipped to face the challenges of piracy; do you know why they are not equipped? Sometimes, you tend to ask with these huge budgets where is it taking us to, during the 1970s the pride of joining the navy was there, there was serious training in UK, India, and USA and then we did not experience all these security lapses because there was a serious training. How many of our naval personnel travel out today for training, how many of the so- called vessels that we have today are in operation, the best you get today are only confined to oil installations and their confinement to these oil installations some of us know because we are in a modern economy, and those who are really involved in the establishment of these installations don’t want their pocket to run dry, so every other user of the sea like the offshore vessel, coastal tankers, trawlers, they are on their own, we have received a lot of reports concerning attacks at sea where the navy were alerted and we know the response that they get from the navy.
There seem to be a drop in sea robbery after the amnesty with militants….
I don’t know the drop that you are talking about, I was opportuned to be in Calabar when the attacks on the trawlers became so much after the amnesty and I had to move down to Calabar. I had a chat with the director of SSS and I know what he said. At times, one will say that the government knows these boys; we also know that the boys deviated from the core struggle to criminal acts. But anyhow you look at it, the government agencies that are the custodians of security of lives know these boys and where they are. How do you convince somebody who is used to making millions of Naira within 30minutes to drop his arms and he says okay he has dropped it. You and I also know that the arms were given to them by the some people, if they really surrendered their arms, then I don’t know where they are getting the money from today to acquire fresh arms to carry out their evil activities on the high seas. Government said it has granted them amnesty, then government should take care of them and rehabilitate them, not by forming a committee, it is only the man that is directly involved that knows how to solve that problem. You will be surprised that it is even a pride to be a militant today, they are given I.D cards, if you go to the Niger Delta region where they have their camps and see the menace they cause; if they enter a commercial vehicle, they will tell you “I am a militant so I am not paying, I have my I.D card” because he is not working and so where do you expect him to get money to pay his transport fare? More so, the peanuts government promised to give them is not being given to them so what do you want them to do, you asked somebody to leave what he is doing which is not good and he tells you that he is doing it for a different reason, if you want him to stop, what do you do, you promise to take care of his needs and bring him back to become a normal human being and you failed to do it, what do you expect.
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