Maritime Education towards SMART Bangladesh: Sajid Hussain (15E)

Bangladesh Marine Academy Commandant Sajid Hussain (15E) Presented this paper at Bangladesh Marine Community, Singapore (BMCS) Seminar on 1 September 2023 at Sentosa, Singapore

Maritime Education is a unique combination of academic studies, practical skills and mental strength. Instead of ‘Certificate of Knowledge’ a marine certificate is titled as ‘Certificate of Competency (CoC)’. Living lonely and working on floating and moving entity for months away from one’s family and friends is not an easy task.

The earth is being rotated by nearly 1.9 million Seafarers (Marine Officers – Marine Engineers – Marine Ratings) through their day-and-night effort in moving yearly nearly 11 billion tons of cargo (commodities, fuel, foodstuffs, goods and products) every year by over 74,000 merchant ships from country to country ensuring 7.8 billion humans’ well-being. International Maritime Organization (IMO) – 1 of the 14 specialized agencies of UN – is the authority of world shipping including the Maritime Education.

The Maritime Education based on IMO STCW Convention (International Convention on the Standards of Training, Certification and Watch-keeping for Seafarers 1978, as amended) applies to all 175 Member-States of IMO; the countries that have complied the STCW Convention are included in IMO White List including our Bangladesh.

Marine education of Bangladesh is preparing world class seafarers. New technological inclusion will make them more efficient in this competitive sector. Currently around 7,000 Bangladeshi seafarers are earning US$ 400 million annually to our economy. With the current phase this amount target to US$ 1 billion by 2030 or even before. Bangladesh is keeping the pace with the Si-Tech rich IMO’s Maritime Education.

Bangladesh Marine Academy, founded by the Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in 1972, is marching at full-speed ahead with due patriotism; leading the countries’ maritime education of the public and private academies to meet the challenges of the 21st century producing the smart workforce required to ensure ‘SMART Bangladesh’ by 2041 echoing our Hon’ble Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.

View above, the Bangladesh Maritime Community of Singapore (BMCS) is enthusiastic to assemble the concerned stakeholders in the Maritime World to value the forthcoming newer forms of maritime education and disseminate it among the new generation prospective young boys and girls to embark upon the various professions based on the oceans having full of oceans of opportunities. Needless to mention that this ‘BMCS Initiative’ will lead Bangladesh in achieving the desired ‘Smart Bangladesh’ in the area of Maritime Education too.