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The Dean of Maritime Studies at the Regional Maritime University (RMU), Dr. George Kobina Vandyck, has stressed the need for governments in the sub-region to invest in the training and education of their youth in the maritime field.
He said maritime education and training has a great potential in reducing unemployment situation in the sub-region.
“The education that we provide here has the potential to solve a lot of the unemployment problems in Ghana,” he noted.
Dr. Vandyck in an interview with the media ahead of the university’s fund raising dinner slated for July 28, 2023 in Accra last Friday, said governments in the sub-region, particularly the member states that run the university, should be deliberate in their action in sponsoring and investing in the education of their nationals in the maritime education and training.
However, he noted, in spite of the many opportunities in the maritime education and related fields, maritime education and training is very expensive, hence making it difficult for a number of prospective candidates to undergo training.
The RMU was originally established in 1958 as the Ghana Nautical College before becoming Regional Maritime Academy in 1983, when it added some member states, namely Cameroon, The Gambia, Liberia and Sierra Leone. The name of the school later changed to its present name in 2007, when it gained a full university’s status.
The school is therefore celebrating its 65th anniversary as an institution and 40 years as a regional tertiary institution this year with a number of activities, including the fund raising dinner.
The overall objective for the establishment of RMU was to promote regional co-operation in the maritime industry focusing on the training to ensure the sustained growth and development of the industry.
Touching on the fund raising activity, Dr. Vandyck said the rationale of the exercise was to raise enough funds to support the training of students in maritime education.
“The idea behind this fund raising dinner is to promote the University from where it is right now to where we wanted it to be; to be the best university in maritime education and training in the West African sub-region,” he noted.
In addition, he said, “the essence of this fund raising dinner is to attract enough funds to finish some of our infrastructural projects on campus but also to offer scholarships to our students because maritime education and training is very expensive.”
Dr. Vandyck therefore urged all relevant stakeholders of the school to join the university in its fund raising activity to help realise enough funds to support the running of the school.
“We need to have some sort of investments in the training of the youth in maritime education training so that they can go out there and make a meaningful impact,” he said.
He explained that maritime education and training involves a lot of equipment which are very expensive and that the university needed to acquire such modern facilities in order to provide its students with the needed skills and competencies.
Dr. Vandyck said the university also needed to expand its facilities in order to create space for prospective students who desire to acquire maritime education and training.
“We need to ensure that our students are getting the best possible training that we can offer them. But all this come at a cost and the university can’t do it alone,” he said.
He further said the university would also use part of the funds that would be realised to continue projects that had stalled on campus as well as purchase new equipment for training.
Dr. Vandyck also encouraged the youth to consider alternative livelihoods in the maritime space, saying “the youth need to look beyond the traditional careers; a shipping career is a very fruitful career.”
For him, maritime career offers a lifetime experience to its practitioners and that “when you are in a ship, you are travelling the world.”
He said although Ghana is not owning many ships, there are several ships in the maritime space owned by different countries who are looking for trained people to recruit.
The Acting Vice Chancellor, Dr. Jethro W. Brooks Jr, said there was an already market of job opportunities waiting for graduates from the school to be recruited.
He said students from the university are even offered job opportunities before they graduate, hence encouraging prospective students to consider RMU as their first choice.
He said the university was interested in providing hands-on training to its students to become relevant to themselves, their communities and countries as a whole.
That, Dr. Brooks Jr said, the university through its own initiative had instituted a scholarship scheme to support the needy but brilliant students.
For him, the fund raising dinner would help to raise some funds to support the university’s scholarship scheme in order to provide more scholarships to its brilliant but needy students.
He said currently three students are benefiting from the scholarship scheme which was established last year.
