Fijian Maritime Ambition

Life before starting the Scholarship

Sanaila Daveta is an Engine Room Rating working on oil tankers in the Pacific Islands with nine years experience at sea. His professional and educational background includes stints working in civil engineering, as a policeman, completing a Diploma in Human Resources Management, Diploma in Civil Engineering, an Engine Room Rating qualification, and most recently the Diploma in Marine Engineering with New Zealand Qualifications Authority (NZQA) at MIT in Auckland. Sanaila has varied responsibilities including navigation, cargo handling/stowage, marine engineering, electronic and control engineering, maintenance and repair and radio communications.

He cites the internationally recognised credibility of the NZQA Diploma as the reason he undertook the challenging scholarship opportunity: “The main reason (I applied) is that the Diploma in Marine Engineering in NZ isn’t available in Fiji. Also, I need the Diploma for International Maritime Organisation (IMO) accreditation, and I read that NZ is the best place to do this course.”

Experience as a student

Sanaila found the Diploma in Marine Engineering on the Maritime New Zealand website. He says it was an easy decision to apply as there is no equivalent, IMO recognised, qualification in Fiji.

He says that the Diploma has really boosted his confidence: “Over-all I am very confident and very satisfied with the knowledge that I have gained and I can guarantee that if I’d done a similar course in the Islands I wouldn’t have gained the same understanding and knowledge.”

New skills and future plans

Sanaila says that the Diploma will open up a range of exciting career opportunities: “On certain ships I can become a chief engineer, which means I will lead a team of engineers on board, but on bigger ships I’ll be a 3rd engineer, or 4th engineer, and I’ll perform the duty of ensuring the maintenance and the precautionary measures for boilers, and various machinery like the pumps. It depends a bit on the company that I work for, but I can potentially even be a second engineer working with a 3000 kilowatt engine. The higher the rank, the more responsibility.”

He says that the Diploma has equipped him with the knowledge he needs to step up in his career, including when it comes to training other crew members such as apprentices and cadets in both theoretical and practical aspects of Marine Engineering.

“I managed to learn engineering responsibilities in terms of the safety of life at sea, the safety of the ship and environmental awareness and pollution prevention. Studying to be a ship’s engineer has enabled me to gain the qualities and knowledge needed in order to carry out daily routines onboard any ship out in the ocean.“