OREANDA-NEWS. November 14, 2011. The Novikontas Maritime College has completed a project aimed at modernising the equipment which it uses to train sailors, thus becoming the most modern training centre of its kind in the Baltic States and the CIS and one of the most modern training facilities in this area in all of Europe. Co-financed by the Citadele Bank and the European Regional Development Fund, the project is aimed at training as many foreign sailors who require certification as possible in Latvia, reported the press-centre of Citadele Bank.

Irrespective of the country in which they work, sailors must, after completing their higher education, undergo regularly scheduled training to improve their professional skills – usually once every five years. The Novikontas Maritime College offers a full range of courses for maritime professionals. All of the courses are in line with the requirements of international conventions, and the certificates which are issued by the Latvian Maritime Register are recognised all around the world.

The modernisation of the Maritime College involved the procurement of new navigation and machine room simulators – a navigation simulator with a dynamic positioning model, a navigation simulator with simulation of radar operations and maps, and a machine room simulator which makes it possible to work synchronously with the navigation simulator so that helmsmen and machinists can be trained together.

“We have trained sailors from Latvia, Sweden, England, Norway and the Netherlands in the past, but this project will allow us to provide the quality of training and the technologies that are needed to encourage an increasing number of maritime professionals to study at our school,” says the director of the Novikontas Maritime College, Aleksandrs Hropenko. “We also want to increase the number of sailors who come to us from Ukraine and Russia. We will be the only educational institution of this kind with such a high quality of equipment in the Baltic States and CIS, and in terms of quality, we will be a serious competitor for similar training centres elsewhere in Europe.”

“The quality of education is one of those areas about which there have been and continue to be very serious discussions in Latvia,” says Agnese Paegle, head of the Citadele Bank’s Corporate Services Directorate. “I am sure that education is an area in which there is great potential for growth here in Latvia, and the development of education is important both in terms of training high-level specialists, as well as in providing for a very promising export niche which could help a great deal with economic recovery. I am delighted, therefore, that Citadele has also made its investment in the field of improving education. The Novikontas Maritime College is a successful example of this. Our sailors have always been in much demand all around the world, and it is critically important not just to maintain the bar at its current level, but to raise it even further.”

Financing for the project included EUR 420,000 from the European Regional Development Fund and EUR 600,000 from the Citadele Bank. The Novikontas Maritime College began the project in December 2010 and completed it in September of this year.

The Novikontas Maritime College offers 59 different courses in the maritime sector. “We start with elementary survival techniques in the sea if a ship needs to be abandoned, and we end with key nuances in running a ship and transporting people,” says the deputy director of the college, Dmitrijs Semjonovs. “We train sailors at all levels, from captains to stewards. A sailor is more than a mechanic, helmsman, seaman or cook, because when the ship is under an autonomous regime and is far from land, each sailor must also be a fire-fighter, rescue specialist, nurse and, to put it simply, a strong person. Our educational institution ensures that all of these skills are developed.”