Vice President of Palmali Group Rauf Aliyev: "Everything depends on human resources"

Any shipping company in Russia has to solve the common issues such as ships manning, training of seafarers, requirements that crew members of ‘river-sea’ vessels should have several diplomas, employment and how to keep employees. Vice President Rauf Aliyev has told PortNews in a recent interview how Palmali Group handles the issues.

- Rauf, can you say that ship manning turns out a problem for your company  and if it does how is it solved?

- Actually, this problem faces each of the shipping company and we are no exception. It is related both to the general crisis of the seafarer trade, and with the specific market situation prevailing at the moment. To address the issue the Palmali owned vessels, sea-going or mixed ‘river-sea’ class, are divided into groups, depending on the project, class, and tonnage. For ships of large tonnage, where salaries are commonly high, and the work itself is considered more prestigious, this is not a real problem as it is for river ships crew manning. And every company defines for itself the criteria for handpicking the crew.

Our company selects only competent professionals who have been interviewed and have passed successfully tests, who are able to perform honestly their duties and to train their employees. We conduct regularly qualification tests of our seafarers, send the best employees for refresher training and improve their position or shift them to an equivalent one. All this is done to avoid employee turnover, to make their career more stable. And this scheme has proved its effectiveness: we now have in our company the sailors, who had succeeded in their career from a trainee to a captain position.

- According to the law, the crew members of ' river-sea’ class vessels should be certified to work as well on river as on sea vessels. Does this affect your crews manning policy?

- Our company operates both sea-going ships and vessels of mixed "river-sea" class, so this a compulsory requirement for the navigators to be certified for work on both types of ships, and we also encourage the people operating sea-going vessels to have two certificates. The problem is that seafarers consider the work on river and "river-sea" vessels less prestigious and skilled, though, as we have seen, requires additional training and certification, and is strictly regulated by control agencies. When manning we pay attention to professionals certified for work on river transport.

- What would you say about the qualification of young professionals who come to work in your company?

- Russian school of water transport professionals still remains at a very high level and satisfies any international standards. No wonder that the Russian seafarers are always in demand on the global labor market. The company has concluded agreements to train our young seafarers in Maritime State Academy of Ushakov, in Novorossiysk and its branches in Rostov-on-Don, and Astrakhan; in Rostov-on-Don branch of Moscow State Academy of Water Transport, in Novosibirsk State Academy of Water Transport and its branch in Omsk; in Volga State Academy of Water Transport and its branch in Astrakhan.  

We fostered our young seafarers and saw their promotion track, when their knowledge helped them grow from trainees to senior navigator for 7-8 years.

Interviewed by Margaret Babkova