Speech by Senior Minister of State for Transport, Mr Chee Hong Tat at the Singapore Maritime Week Maritime Manpower Forum

Building a Future-ready Maritime Workforce

Excellencies, Distinguished guests and partners,

Good morning.

1.     It is appropriate that we are rounding off this year’s Singapore Maritime Week with a discussion on talent development. This is because talent lies in the heart of all our efforts to grow the maritime industry.

2.     Over the last few days, we have heard from industry leaders and experts on how the global maritime industry will be impacted by acceleration in digitalisation and technology adoption, and a greater emphasis on environmental sustainability.

3.     These changes will require governments, companies and workers to adopt new operating models and processes, design and comply with new standards, and learn new skills to remain relevant. Workplaces will be transformed, and jobs will be redesigned.

4.     Companies and workers that can adjust quickly and effectively to these new requirements will stand to benefit from the waves of change, by differentiating themselves from the competition. However, failure to adapt to the changes in good time could result in some companies losing business and some workers losing their jobs. This is a serious matter.

5.     Talent development and lifelong learning must therefore play a pivotal role in this transformation, otherwise we are likely to see more incidents of discontent and even unrest in many societies. We need to up-skill and re-skill our existing maritime workforce to enable our workers to take on the new jobs created and thrive in the new operating environment, and we also need to attract new talent with the required competencies to join the industry.

6.     Today I would like to share Singapore’s experience in working together with our industry players, unions and institutes of higher learning to build a strong, future-ready workforce to ride this wave of change.

Building a Future-ready Workforce

7.     The nature of work in the maritime industry is changing with digitalisation and the emergence of new and more advanced green technologies. We need to identify the new skills for our maritime workforce. This is an important first step, but it is only the first step.

8.     For example, as we explore different ways to decarbonise vessels, seafarers will need to learn new technology systems on board to safely handle alternative fuels such as green methanol, ammonia and hydrogen.

9.     The Maritime Just Transition Task Force, founded by international organisations and the Singapore Maritime Foundation (SMF) as its program partner, was set up to bring together government agencies, unions, employers and academia, to pursue a fair and equitable green transition in shipping for seafarers.

10.    The Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore (MPA) and the SMF partnered Pacific Carriers Limited, Pacific International Lines and American Bureau of Shipping to establish the Alliance for Future Maritime Talent (AFMT) in September last year.

11.    The AFMT is supported by a Tripartite Advisory Panel comprising 17 industry leaders, union leaders, industry associations and partners from adjacent sectors. Its mission is to identify emerging and future skills, as well as competencies needed by the maritime industry. The Panel aims to deliver its report and recommendations later this year after consultations and discussions with stakeholders.

Attracting and Nurturing Talent

12.    Besides identifying the future skills needed, we must also attract and nurture talent. One way to do this is through continuous learning and up-skilling for workers in both shore-based and seafaring roles. We have taken a life cycle approach to career and skills development.

13.    We work closely with our institutes of higher learning to offer various maritime-related pre-employment training courses that will prepare students for careers in the maritime industry. We provide scholarships and awards to support local seafarers and to nurture talents for our industry.

14.    The Tripartite Maritime Scholarship offered by MPA and our tripartite partners supports and grooms promising students to be Ship Captains or Chief Engineers of ocean-going ships. I’m glad to see many young men and women taking up this scholarship.

15.    The MaritimeONE scholarship offered by the SMF and our industry partners nurtures students pursuing a wide range of Degrees or Diplomas in our institutes of higher learning, and encourages them to take up internship and work-study programmes in the maritime industry.

16.    With the increasing importance of deep-technology and expertise in sustainability and digitalisation, I am pleased to announce that the Singapore Maritime Institute, supported by MPA, will launch a new MaritimeONE-Singapore Maritime Institute Postgraduate Research & Development Scholarship. This is the first maritime post-graduate scholarship in Singapore.

17.    The Scholarship aims to further strengthen our maritime R&D ecosystem and build up a pipeline of local talent to deepen our research capabilities in key areas such as digitalisation and decarbonisation. The scholars will work in the different maritime Centres of Excellence after their postgraduate studies.

18.    I encourage Singaporeans with a passion in fields such as Emissions Management, Chemical Engineering, Cybersecurity, Data Analytics, Artificial Intelligence, and many other disciplines, to apply for this scholarship when applications open later this year.

19.    Another key success factor in the maritime industry is international exposure because this is a global-oriented sector. MPA offers the Global Internship Award (GIA) for students to gain on-the-job training and global exposure at reputable international maritime companies in Singapore and overseas.

20.    Traditionally, those who participate in the GIA are from maritime disciplines. However, we are seeing a growing interest from students who are taking non-maritime disciplines but are interested to explore opportunities in the maritime sector.

21.    From 1 May this year, 39 undergraduates will begin their internships with 28 maritime companies. 22 of them are doing maritime-related courses and 17 are from non-maritime disciplines such as data science and analytics, chemical engineering and information systems.

22.    The students come from the National University of Singapore, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore Management University, as well as Singapore Institute of Technology which is participating in the GIA for the first time.

23.    For those who are already working in the maritime industry, MPA offers the Maritime Leadership Progamme in collaboration with the Singapore Management University, to provide opportunities for senior management leaders in the maritime industry to gain overseas exposure, build global perspectives and strengthen their business networks locally and abroad.

24.    Maritime Singapore will also continue to remain open and welcome talent from abroad to complement our local workforce. A good balance of local and foreign talent in our maritime workforce is needed to support business growth in Singapore, to further grow ourselves as a hub port and International Maritime Centre, and to create good jobs and career progression opportunities for our workers.

25.    For mid-career maritime workers, various training courses supported by our Maritime Cluster Fund are available for shore-based workers to gain new skills and knowledge. SailMAP, which is funded by MPA and our tripartite partners, also supports the earnings of our local seafarers in between sailings, while they upgrade their seafaring skills.

26.    As the maritime industry undergoes transformation, skills demanded by the maritime industry will be increasingly cross-sectoral and transferable. The Career Conversion Programme for Sea Transport Professionals and Associates provides On-Job-Training opportunities to re-skill mid-career individuals interested in the maritime sector and the existing maritime workforce so that they too can take on new or expanded job roles in the sector.

27.    Since its launch in 2018, around 200 mid-career individuals have benefited from this programme.

28.    We are also keen to attract more youths to join the maritime industry. I am encouraged by the passion and energy of our MaritimeSG Youth Ambassadors. These are students from our institutes of higher learning with a strong interest in the maritime industry and are keen to engage their peers on maritime issues. Some of the Youth Ambassadors are here with us in the audience.

29.    I joined them for breakfast earlier this morning, and could feel their interest and passion for the maritime industry, and their enthusiasm to share more about the exciting opportunities offered by Maritime Singapore with their peers.

30.    I would like to thank our Youth Ambassadors for being strong supporters and advocates for the maritime industry and look forward to more young people joining their ranks.

Redesigning Jobs

31.    The industry needs to continually work with the government and unions to redesign jobs, to adapt to the skills and demands of the available talent pool, so that the jobs in the maritime industry remain accessible and attractive.

32.    At the Singapore Maritime Week last year, I announced that MPA is working with SMF to initiate trials on job redesign. I am pleased to see that MPA and SMF have partnered with Pacific Carriers Limited (PCL) and Pacific International Lines (PIL) to undertake job redesign pilot projects for the roles of vessel operator and technical superintendent.

33.    These pilots aim to demonstrate the feasibility and benefits of job redesign, and provide learning points and recommendations for future maritime job redesign efforts. Our initial pilots were successful in showing that traditional maritime roles can be redesigned. It is important that we put our hearts and minds together and strengthen the attractiveness and accessibility of such roles.

34.    For example, the career pathway for vessel operators has been widened to take on a more significant role in commercial discussions, where such workers can tap on their operational expertise to build strong relationships with clients; and their work processes can also be improved with the use of digitalisation, such as redesigning the ship monitoring process through the use of real-time information and data visualisation.

35.    Barriers to entry can be lowered so that more opportunities are made available to a wider group of workers. Currently, technical superintendents need to have about seven to 10 years of seafaring experience and each superintendent manages four to five ships. By introducing an assistant technical superintendent role, which requires fewer years of seafaring experience to manage one to two ships, and complementing it with targeted training to close the gap in seafaring experience, more workers will be able to take on this role.And they can gain experience over time and subsequently move up the skills and progression ladder.

36.    MPA, SMF, PCL and PIL have also worked with Ernst & Young to develop and publish the Maritime Workforce Transformation Guidebook on Job Redesign. The Guidebook incorporates learnings from the job redesign pilot projects to synthesise key findings and actionable recommendations on job redesign for the maritime industry.We hope it can be a useful reference for other maritime companies who want to embark on job redesign.

37.    With the successful pilot projects and publication of the Guidebook, our next step is to scale-up the adoption of job redesign across our industry. NTUC also launched the Company Training Committee (CTC) initiative and has worked with companies to set up 1,300 CTCs, benefitting 100,000 workers across different industries in Singapore.

38.    Barriers to entry can be lowered so that more opportunities are made available to a wider group of workers. Currently, technical superintendents need to have about seven to 10 years of seafaring experience and each superintendent manages four to five ships. By introducing an assistant technical superintendent role, which requires fewer years of seafaring experience to manage one to two ships, and complementing it with targeted training to close the gap in seafaring experience, more workers will be able to take on this role.And they can gain experience over time and subsequently move up the skills and progression ladder.

39.    Companies setting up CTCs can benefit from co-funding from NTUC. The Ministry of Finance had earlier provided NTUC a S$70 million grant to support companies in various areas, including projects to strengthen their digitalisation capabilities, improve productivity and certainly, redesign jobs.

Ensuring a safe and secure operating environment for seafarers

40.    Finally, we need to continually ensure the safety of our seafarers, who are integral in keeping supply chains flowing. The recent search and rescue effort of SUCCESS 9, which was boarded by pirates off the Ivory coast, underscores the need for continued collaboration between maritime authorities including MPA, shipowners and operators, multinational agencies, as well as the navy and coast guards.

Conclusion

41.    The transformation of the maritime industry is only possible if we secure a pipeline of talent with the necessary future-ready skills. The advantage of Maritime Singapore is the strong partnership and trust that we have built up over the years among our tripartite partners – government, employers and unions. This is something that is very precious, and we need to deepen this trust and partnership further because we need to continue our close collaboration and help one another along the transformation journey.

42.    And always remember to place the safety and well-being of our people at the heart of everything we do, because every worker matters.

43.    Thank you.