WISTA Sri Lanka partners with YSP of CASA to host Career Day 2017

Nilu Wickramasinghe

The Women’s International Shipping and Trading Association (WISTA) Sri Lanka partnered with Young Shipping Professionals of CASA (YSP) and very successfully organised ‘Career Day 2017’, program for students from schools in the Galle District on 5 May at Hall de Galle. The chief guest for the event was Minister of Petroleum Resources Minister Chandima Weerakkody.

The two Associations as their CSR Project jointly planned and carried out this program for the school children in the Southern Province, to introduce and promote Shipping and Logistics as a lucrative career to school leavers through a career guidance workshop with the support of educational institutions that offer Logistics and Maritime courses and programs in this field.

Sri Lanka being an island nation with its unique geographic location as well as a gateway destination to Asia is seen by many major industry players and is now focusing on relocating Logistics and Shipping to the Indian Ocean Island where great opportunities are available to speedily connect many continents with consumers of Asia and Africa. 

Therefore, a new shift in the maritime industry is taking place, from the North to the South with Sri Lanka emerging as a maritime hub after the rise of Singapore and Dubai, creating a Southern Maritime zone. Being located at the southern tip of South Asia, and situated between the major ports of Middle East, East Asia, Sri Lanka is ideally located for feeder connectivity in the region. The port of Colombo has the deepest draught and most efficient terminals in South Asia which is considered world class. In addition other ports in Galle, Hambantota, Trincomalee are available for bulk, Ro/Ro, cruise shipping, bunkering etc. around the island.

The Port of Galle is strategically located on world shipping routes and plans are underway to develop the Port of Galle to a leisure and freight handling port in order to contribute to the economic development of the country, 

WISTA members with the seafarers and their children

It was a half-day program with presentations by leading professionals in the maritime and logistics field who spoke about, various career options available within the fields of shipping, logistics and international trade to create an interest in the subject area. This was followed by a tour of the Port of Galle.

Parallel to the Career Day event, WISTA Sri Lanka handed over books on advocacy for seafarer children at MercMarine office in Galle. These books were gifted from Marissa Oca from WISTA Philippines who publishes books for seafarer’s children. She is also a proponent of livelihood projects for seafarer’s wives.