KARACHI: The Pakistan National Shipping Corporation (PNSC) along with the Pakistan Marine Academy (PMA) is actively considering providing more employment opportunities to the PMA cadets, a statement said on Friday. A high-level joint meeting of the two organisations was held to discuss the issue. Besides other senior officials of the two organisations, the meeting was attended by Arif Elahi, chairman of PNSC, and Commodore Syed Akber Naqi, commandant of PMA, the statement said. The meeting constituted a three-member committee headed by Brig Rashid Siddiqui (Retd) and comprising Zaheer Baber and the Commandant Marine Academy as its members. The committee has been assigned the task to develop a new Recruitment System for the PMA cadets, with the cooperation of DG Ports and Shipping, it said. The meeting decided that a conference of Private Marine Training Institutes and the heads of Merchant Navy organisations will soon be convened for a meeting. It was also suggested that the private shipping companies should be persuaded to provide employment to PMA cadets and the number of cadets who sign on and sign off on PNSC ships should be raised from 18 to 30, the statement said. These cadets may also be provided employment at harbour crafts and harbour rovers. It was also decided that during the training, these cadets will be paid scholarships (stipend) sponsored by PNSC. The committee is actively considering scholarship of Rs0.1 million per head to the five position holder cadets of PMA, it said. PNSC has also offered financial assistance for upgrading physics and chemistry labs of PMA. It was also decided that only those institutions having ample experience of shipping would be allowed to impart training so that the practice of awarding certificate without any training is to discourage and brought to an end. It was also decided that a committee, comprising PNSC shipping experts would redesign the syllabus.
