Male’, Maldives – Maldives Transport and Contracting Company’s (MTCC) has announced that they have changed the crew of their trailing suction hopper dredger “Mahaa Jarraafu” to all Maldivians.
MTCC announced in a press release that from today onward the total of 17 crew of the vessel would be all Maldivians. This includes the captain, two chief officers, chief engineer, second engineer, 4 pipe operators, electro-technical officer and crew and cook. MTCC stated that the local staff had been trained under the foreigners who used to work on the vessel before and that they vouch for the capacity of the current local staffs.
They also stated that this decision would help lower the amount of money being moved out of the country as salaries by foreigners and increase the job opportunities to the locals.
The USD 36 Million dredger was built in 2017 by IHC Holland in their Nantong Rainbow shipyard located in China. The dredger is 92.95 meters long and 16.30 meters wide and has a dredging depth of 50 meters and a 3700 cubic meter hopper making it one of the largest of it’s kind in the Asian region.
