Recommendation
- The Government, industry and training providers should join hands to introduce to young people the career opportunities of the entire industry – from navigation to high value-added maritime sectors.
- The Government may consider riding on its annual flagship event “Hong Kong Maritime Week” for publicity of the industry.
- The industry and training providers should step up promotion efforts to secondary schools so that students could visualise the real working environment and career paths of different job roles in the industry.
- The Government, industry and training providers are also encouraged to deploy social media channels and online communities to reach out to young people so as to generate their interests in the industry.
- Recent enhancements of several incentive schemes under MATF, e.g. enhanced fiscal support under the Sea-going Training Incentive Scheme and the Ship Repair Training Incentive Scheme were considered helpful in retaining serving staff.
- To attract new blood, the Government may make reference to the experiences of other leading IMCs and join hands with industry companies and unions to provide financial incentives to students undertaking designated maritime programmes.
- Employers should also review the remuneration packages of their employees regularly to ensure that they are competitive in the market.
- As it is particularly difficult to recruit and retain junior staff, employers may consider providing extra incentives, e.g. performance bonus and attendance allowance to these staff.
- Some companies have been doing well in recruiting and retaining talents and are worth referencing by their counterparts.
- The Government and the industry may consider bringing together these companies and provide suitable platforms for sharing of good practices. This kind of sharing not only allows companies to learn from each other, but also enables them to keep generating new ideas which may be helpful for staff recruitment and retention.
- The Marine Department and training providers may explore possible means to enable new entrants to obtain seafaring qualifications (both deck and engineer streams) in a faster track.
- Proposed measures worth studying include but not limited to the following:
- Encourage industry companies to provide summer internships on board ocean-going vessels to students undertaking designated maritime programmes and recognise their shipboard service during internship as part of the sea time required to sit for the examination for Certificate of Competency (CoC) (Deck/Marine Engineer Officer) (Class 3)
- Shorten the duration of pre-sea training
- Enhance practical training on marine engineering in order to apply for more sea time remission for engineering students
- Offer more frequent schedules for various classes of CoC examinations and training
- The Government may consider reviewing the immigration policy by counting the sea time on board ocean-going vessels in the seven consecutive years required for the application of permanent residency, provided that the sea services are under the employment of Hong Kong companies or covered by Hong Kong Collective Bargaining Agreement.
- The Government could take a more proactive role to liaise with Mainland authorities to establish a mutual recognition mechanism of academic qualifications in order to enhance cross-border talent mobility.
