THE Singapore National Shippers' Council (SNSC) yesterday launched the Singapore Shippers' Academy to offer professional courses to local and regional shippers and train at least 1,000 people from the industry within three years.
The academy - the first specialised institution of its kind in Asia - aims to raise standards among shippers by providing comprehensive education and training. Currently available training programmes are not suitable for logistics and shipping service professionals.
SNSC wants to boost productivity and innovation among shippers, said its chairman John Lu. 'Unfortunately, the lack of quality education and training programmes to improve knowledge and expertise among shippers is holding us back from achieving the values we seek.'
The Shippers' Academy will address this problem through a specialised curriculum and training. Certification will range from short-term professional development courses, which are already being conducted, to longer-term certificate and diploma courses. The latter courses will start running by 2012.
The concept for the Shippers' Academy was mooted in 2006. Planning has been going on since then to decide how best to fund and operate it, and on selecting course partners and formalising course content.
The academy yesterday also signed memorandums of understanding with partners it will tie up with to provide courses and content.
These include the American Society of Transportation and Logistics, Cambridge Academy of Transport, Edexcel, Freight Transport Association, Ngee Ann Polytechnic, the Singapore Business Federation and UBS.
International Enterprise (IE) Singapore and Spring Singapore are supporting partners of the academy, which is funded under the Local Enterprise and Association Development (Lead) programme.
IE declined to give specific funding numbers for the project, saying grants totalling $46.8 million have been given out under Lead since the initiative began in 2005.
'The academy will provide customised training programmes to the shippers community,' IE chief executive Chong Lit Cheong said yesterday. 'With greater competency, Singapore companies, especially SMEs, will be able to compete more efficiently in an increasingly complex trading environment.'