Just as elsewhere, personnel issue in the marine industry is vary acute. Specialists “drain” to foreign ship-owners (or to vessels under flags of convenience, that is officially not Russian ones) is a problem of our fleet. Shortage of regular labor force, latter-day designers and so on is observed in the shipbuilding sector.

Mechanics, welding operators and other specialists as well as engineers handling up-to-date software, capable of calculating modern vessels, advancing along with new technologies are already in deficit. And their shortage will be observed in future, since prestige of blue-collar jobs and second level education (as well as of higher technical education) was lost. Young men with financial abilities strive to gain diploma of higher education, though a fictitious one. As a result we have thousands of unemployed accountants and a catastrophic situation in the production field.

There are efforts to solve the problem within the framework of state programmes and on the sites – n port cities and at specific enterprises. This implies special-purpose scholarships for students of field professions and elaboration of young professional support programmes. All these attempts give us faint hope that the situation can be improved.