Career Hotline
Shore prospects
Pervin Malhotra

Q I come from a lower middle-class family and have always dreamt of joining the Merchant Navy. My friend told me that getting in as a Rating is the easiest way. Please tell me what the job entails and whether it is a good idea?

— Hemant Kumar

A In terms of functional hierarchy, Ratings work under the Officers in three major departments: deck, engine room and catering. In ships and dredgers that operate with small general-purpose crew, Ratings work both in the engine room as well as on the deck.

Deck Ratings mostly work manually – cleaning, sweeping, chipping off the rust, polishing etc. They are also involved in the maintenance and operations at the time of loading and unloading the cargo.

Moreover, Ratings act as ‘look-outs’ and helmsmen on the bridge. At the port, they assist in the mooring of the ship.

Besides some private establishments, the three main establishments for training of Ratings are T.S. Bhadra, Kolkata, T.S. Mekhla, Vishakhapatnam, and T.S. Navalakshi, Gujarat. As many as 640 cadets are trained annually at these three institutes for the deck department and engine room. On completion of training, you will be engaged as Seaman-III.

To be eligible, you should have completed Class X and be in the 18-20 age group. Admission is subject to your clearing the medical fitness test.

In a recent initiative, the Directorate has authorised the Board of Examiners for Seafarers (BES), an independent professional body to conduct All India Exit Examination for GP Rating trainees, on a quarterly basis. The first such exam was conducted in March, 2005. This initiative will ensure uniform application of criteria of evaluation. The GP Rating CDC is a mandatory requirement for all GP Rating jobs.

As English is widely spoken internationally, lack of command over the language would adversely affect your employment opportunities in foreign flagships. Therefore, the minimum prescribed percentage of marks in English language for GP Ratings has been kept at 40 per cent. Currently, at the lower end, there is an oversupply of 2 lakh Ratings, which is expected to further escalate to 2.55 lakh by 2010. Moreover, there is stiff competition from the Chinese, Philippinos, Bangladeshis and Russians for these jobs because they are willing to accept cheaper wages (even lesser than those specified by the International Transport Federation (ITF).

Software languages

Q I learnt ‘C’ years ago but haven’t got around to learning the newer versions. Is it true that ‘C’ is considered outdated now?

— Prithvi Mal

A Only those who don’t know much about computer languages would say that.

The modern day C#, C++ and Java are syntactically quite similar to C.

Conventional languages like C and C++ find applications whenever lower level coding is required. You will be surprised to know that according to the latest TIOBE Software Index (July 2006), C is ranked at number two position, next only to Java.

Updated monthly, the ratings are based on the worldwide availability of skilled engineers, courses and third party vendors. The TPC index is not about the best programming language or the language in which most lines of code have been written.

The index can be used to check whether your programming skills are still up to date or to make a strategic decision about what programming language should be adopted when starting to build a new software system.

For the interest of the techie readers of this column, I’m listing the top 20 languages in the order of ranking here: Java, C, (Visual) Basic, PHP, C++, Perl, C#, Python, JavaScript, Delphi, SAS, PL/SQL, Visual FoxPro, Ada, Lisp/Scheme, Pascal, Ruby, ActionScript, VB.NE, COBOL

The writer is a noted career consultant

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