A NEW course to meet the manpower needs of the marine industry was announced yesterday by the Institute of Technical Education (ITE).

The two-year higher national ITE certificate (Higher Nitec) in Marine Offshore Engineering course will begin in April with an initial intake of 64 students per year.

The booming marine industry and accompanying staffing shortage has led to a huge demand for supervisors in the industry.

A 2006 Association of Marine Industries (Asmi) survey revealed that there is a demand for 120 supervisors a year over the next five years.

To plug the gap, ITE has worked closely with Asmi and key industry players like Keppel Fels, Keppel Shipyard, Sembawang Shipyard, Jurong Shipyard and Singapore Technologies Marine to come up with the broad-based course to attract a younger workforce to the industry.

The new course hopes to equip students with skills to give technical support to shipyard employees and supervise fabrication, repair and refurbishment activities of all types of marine vessels and offshore structures.

'With the difficulty faced by the industry in recruiting sufficient Singaporeans to replace retiring supervisors, the industry will have a critical shortage of local supervisory staff in the next 10 years,' said the chairman of the ITE governors, Bob Tan.

Industry players have thrown their support behind the course, offering 56 scholarships worth a total of $544,000.

Thirty-six of these will be from the yards through Asmi and will be worth up to $2,000 a year, and another 20 will come from the navy. There will also be internships at the yards.