Ghana Maritime Authority pushes for Cabotage Act to ensure locals benefit from industry
There are concerns that many Ghanaians are not benefiting from the maritime industry which is mainly dominated by foreigners.
This is so partly, because, there are no laws to enforce local content in the industry in Ghana.
Consequently, the Related: What does the Ghana Maritime Authority do?
Speaking during a courtesy call on the Managing Director of the Graphic Communications Group Limited (GCGL), Mr Kenneth Ashigbey on Wednesday, the new Director General of the GMA, Mr Owusu said it was his vision to ensure that Ghana gets a Cabotage Act within the next few months.
“The maritime industry is big, but unfortunately Ghanaians are not benefiting. So we will like to push for a regulation which will bring what I call the Cabotage Act, so that it is important to bring Ghanaians to take ownership of all vessels and activities and transportation of things that happen in Ghana to be owned by Ghanaians, to be operated by Ghanaians, and vessels that are to be registered to have our flags should be able to be built in Ghana,” he said.
“This Cabotage Act we are contemplating will bring on board the control of the labour relations on our offshore activities, because there are a lot of people with certain skills set but the people on the vessels are using foreigners.”
The Cabotage Act, he said will take into consideration bringing Ghanaians who have the requisite qualification to be working on offshore installations so that Ghana benefits.
Mr Kwame Owusu (right) and Mr Kenneth Ashigbey (left) during the courtesy call on Wednesday.
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With regards to the training of maritime students, one of the main requirements are for graduates to obtain practical experience before they could get job placement.
However, since Ghana does not own shipping vessels, this is not possible for the students.
Mr Owusu explained that there is an issue for the training school to acquire its own vessel and even if it does, there would be a problem on running it.
He said Nigeria for instance does not also have one and it was South African which recently acquired one, and even with that, there was a problem as to how to run it.
“We [Ghana] are contemplating on getting a vessel as a policy” but that is complicated.
In the meantime, he said “the other option is open registration, which gives you the chance for vessels that are not even here to fly the Ghana flag and by so doing we intend to create a relationship with about 300, 400 vessels that may come on board, although we may have to fly our people to go and do the inspection.”
Mr Owusu said with the open registry option, they would be able to have a relationship with ship owners and cut a deal with them to get young men to be trained to be able to meet the practical experience requirement.
He said when it comes to the classroom training, it could be done in about 10 months but the issue was with the practical experience aspect of the training which is a requirement for employment.
The open registry option, which he said would be an alternative to the acquisition of a vessel would help them to be able to optimize the use of the maritime school as right now they have only about 200 students.
He said the number was only 200 because if even they train more, they will become unemployed because they lack the experience aspect.
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