Maritime charity calls women seafarers to apply for COVID-19 retraining grant

Namely, MCG’s Covid-19 Redundancy and Retraining Bursary Fund has helped 75 seafarers with the cost of training to help them get back into work in the sector since it opened a year ago.

In the past 12 months, MCG together with Trinity House, Nautilus Slater Fund and the Merchant Navy Welfare Board have awarded more than £34k towards the cost of a wide range of training courses including certificate renewal and retraining for offshore and wind farms.

However, Chair of MCG, Commander Graham Hockley LVO RN, mentioned that:

There must be female seafarers out there who are out of work and would benefit from retraining. Our message to them and to any other UK-based seafarer who’s lost work due to the pandemic, is that the MCG bursary could help you get back into employment or retrain for a new role in the industry

The bursary covers everything from certificate renewal to writing job applications, from retraining to interviewing skills.

When we set up the bursary fund just over a year ago, it was initially only for six months. But with no government funding available for seafarer retraining and the impact of the pandemic on the availability of work, it made sense to extend the scheme to the end of 2021

said Commander Graham Hockley.

The fund, which is administered by the Marine Society on behalf of MCG, provides extra cash for training and refresher courses and is aimed at merchant seafarers who’ve lost work due to Covid-19 and want to stay in the industry.

Applicants can claim up to £500 towards training or qualifications of their choice.