site.btaCorporate Clients of Maritime Training Centre in Varna Quadruple

Compared to the years before the COVID pandemic, the corporate clients of the Bulgarian Maritime Training Centre (BMTC) have increased nearly four times, said the Executive Director Dencho Dobrev on Tuesday. The state-owned company celebrates its 50th anniversary at the end of July, with Dobrev noting that nearly 1 million students have gone through various trainings at the centre in the past 50 years.

The main task of the BMTC is to provide Bulgarian sailors with the training they need, according to the requirements of international maritime conventions, Dobrev pointed out. The centre also offers courses that are not mandatory for the Maritime Administration Executive Agency and are aligned with the needs of ship owners, who want their crews to have specialized knowledge and skills. Dobrev emphasized that the latest inspections of the European Maritime Safety Agency indicate that the quality of the trainings at the BMTC is above average. 

For Dobrev, the safety of sailors is a priority, as there should be no accidents on board, let alone loss of human life, he argues. This requires that sailors are aware of what awaits them before they board a ship, which is why the centre strives to have as many simulators as possible. "Many think they know everything, but theory often has nothing to do with reality", Dobrev pointed out.

The BMTC also evaluates future captains for work under stressful conditions, with a course for senior assistants who want to become captains currently available. "In this sphere, there is also a kind of nepotism, as very often captains support people of their own nationality for promotion. International companies however are not inclined to appoint uneducated people", noted Dobrev. For this reason, they are now working with foreign senior assistants to the ship's commander, who want to take the captain's post and who first must satisfy the requirements of the psychologists at the BMTC. "If a captain is not well prepared, at sea it can cost the company 40 million dollars", noted Dobrev.

Regarding marine personnel, he commented that the shortage is becoming more and more serious. "If in 2015, according to UN statistics, our country had over 33,000 sailors, in 2021 their number was 22,000, which was a third less", Dobrev pointed out. According to him, a factor for this sharp reduction is the COVID-19 pandemic, which forced many sailors to seek new career paths. Another problem that Dobrev pointed out is that there are no opportunities for training crews of offshore ships in Bulgaria, including personell for ships that lay cables and pipes at great sea depths.

Dobrev said that there is also a need to clarify the regulatory requirements for maritime training centres in the country. "In Varna alone, there are more than 10 registered training centres that conduct courses for sailors, but most of them do not have a material and technical base", noted Dobrev. He stressed however, that a monopoly would also be bad, as shows the case in Romania, where sailors are already coming to Bulgaria because they are forced to wait for months in order to complete the necessary courses.