Ship Maintenance and Repair Services in the Tema Drydock and Shipbuilding Yard in Ghana: Some Challenges, Opportunities and Prospects

This article explored existing policies (if any) and current management structure which govern operations within the yard, examine some major challenges facing the ship maintenance and repair services in Tema Drydock and Shipbuilding Yard, Ghana, identified few drivers that impact positively on the ship repair market with particular reference to the Tema Shipyard. It concludes by proposing sustainable management and maintenance strategies for improved repair services of the yard as well as analyzing the findings ob-tained in the data presentation and discussion sections during the research project. The main finding is that the PSC Tema Shipyard’s ship maintenance and repair services are really overwhelmed with major challenges, representing 55% after summing up four (4) out of the seven (7) captured in the study and are threatening its sustainability, if not properly researched and addressed once and for all. As already stated, carefully analysed conclusions were drawn to effectively address these challenges, followed by suggestions for future research to forestall its cascading effects on the Ghanaian economy as a whole.


Background
The search for an economical means to facilitate trade and commerce is dated back in the ancient century. Consequently, it led to the discovery and invention of various equipment, namely ships, airplanes and lorries. With the aid of these equipment, goods and services can be moved from one place to another by three gued with some major challenges.
By ECORRYS Consulting and Research "ship construction includes ship repair (and conversion) and is directed at the larger sea-going vessels, as represented by Community of European Shipyards Associations (CESA) (ECORRYS Consulting and Research Limited, 2009, p. 22) [3]''. Therefore, ship maintenance and repair services are simply aimed at putting the ship in a good order so as to earn maximum revenue and create employment through its reliability performance.
This research is primarily centred on some challenges, opportunities and Several studies conducted by the developed economies had identified some major challenges and measures being taken to reduce and nip them in the bud so as to maintain and facilitate development of their economies (ECORYS Consulting and Research, 2009, pp. 7, 8, 9, 12 and Center on Globalization, Governance and Competitiveness, Duke University, 2017, pp. 9, 52, 53, 54, 70, 71, 73) [3] [4]. By K. Shahriar Iqbal, et al., most of the Bangladeshis shipyards are also facing many of these major challenges (Iqbal, Zakaria & Hossain, 2010, pp. 151-155) [5].
The Tema Shipyard's management ratified the ISO to ensure compliance with safety, health and environmental standards, stated by a Departmental head. Arguably, its direct implementation appears inconsistent and contradictory to the continual use of a banned silica sand as abrasive blasting method to still do ship repairs (https://www.osha.gov/dts/maritime/standards/guidance/shipyard_guidance.htm) [7].

Problem Statement
In worldwide, effective and efficient management of shipyards to promote their N. N. Kambase World Journal of Engineering and Technology sustainability of late, has become an essential issue to all policy makers, planners, engineers, environmentalists and researchers. The contributions of the shipbuilding and ship repair sector to many nations' economic growth and development, particularly the developed economies are crucial despite the concurrent existing challenges (ECORYS Consulting and Research, 2009, pp. 7, 8, 9, 12 and Center on Globalization, Governance and Competitiveness, Duke University. 2017, pp. 9, 52, 53, 54, 70, 71, 73) [3] [4]. Whilst some advanced countries have taken holistic approach in addressing some of these major challenges facing their shipyards, the least developed countries, like Ghana, seems to be overwhelmed with these challenges. Although the Tema Shipyard, over the past few years, has implemented some safety standards: ISO 14001: 2015 and ISO 45001: 2018, specifically aimed at improving its reputation internationally as stated by one of the departmental heads. It simply looks like, the yard still lacks the capacity and capability to solve these challenges permanently so as to make the sector earns the necessary revenue, create employment and become very competitive in the industry.
Currently, lack of capacity, obsolete maintenance equipment, lack of equipment, inadequate skilled labour, are some of the major challenges facing the ship maintenance and repair services in the Shipyard. The continual existence of these unsolved challenges either in the past or present, directly and indirectly affects the economic, social and environmental aspects of ship maintenance and repair services as well as its sustainable development.
Thus, this research considers it necessary to examine the objectives stated in both the abstract and research objectives logically and impartially in order to also contribute to the sustainable management and development of the Tema Shipyard in Ghana.

Research Questions
Under this section, the study intends to use the following important and essential questions in order to come out with an unbiased article that will contribute to the knowledge industry and enhance revamping of the Tema Shipyard.

Research Objectives
This article also seeks to: Explore existing policies and current management structure, govern operations within the yard.
Examine some major challenges facing the ship maintenance and repair services in Tema Drydock and Shipbuilding Yard Ghana.
Identify few drivers impacting positively on the ship repair market with particular reference to the Tema Shipyard.
Propose sustainable management and maintenance strategies for improved repair services of the yard.

Research Methodology
Strategically, this research is a mixed method of both quantitative and qualitative techniques, seeking to give an in-sights into investigations on the already existing pieces of previous academic research on the subject-matter-the already stated research objectives. The main reasons are: the quantitative data, deals with numbers which can be analysed using the statistical tools whereas, the qualitative data, processes the information of people's judgements, ideas, emotions into detailed descriptions without using numbers. In the qualitative data, the definition of the concepts and process of investigation will be more tentative and explorative than in quantative research (https://edisciplinas.usp.br/pluginfile.php/2317618/mod_resource/content/1/BL OCO%202_Research%20Methods%20The%20Basics.pdf) [8].
It is a case study which depends heavily on documentation, archival records and interviews used in a case study for the data collection (Alhouli, 2011, p. 99) [1]. Data for this paper came from two sources-primary and secondary sources. The primary data derived from designed questionnaire and in-depth interviews held with key experts and stakeholders in the Ghana's maritime organizations. The secondary data, came from research articles, reports, google scholar, research gate, E-books, companies' websites, aim to achieve the objectives of the study.

Explores Existing Policies and Current Management Structure, Govern Operations of the Shipyard
Ship maintenance and repair services worldwide, are often governing by internal and external standards that regulate the activities of the drydock industry. These regulatory standards aim to improve safety and healthy environment, for efficient work practices of all the personnel and stakeholders in the Industry. The Tema Shipyard has ratified and implemented the ISO 14001: 2015 and ISO 45001: 2018 provisions despite the myriad of challenges it faced so as to attract and optimise its competitiveness within the Industry, stated by a departmental head. The Shipyard is qualified as a member state drydock to drive the benefits embedded in the ISO 45001: 2018 (https://www.iso.org/files/live/sites/isoorg/files/store/en/PUB100427.pdf) [9].

The Structure of the Tema Shipyard
The research has found that the Tema Shipyard adopted the Vertical Organizational Chart for its management structure to manage the entire business affairs.

Data Presentation
For the research to achieve its intended objectives and meet the other essen-  • The GMA, PSC Tema Shipyard and SOAG are the main stakeholders in Ghana's shipbuilding and repair industry. The selection of these three organizations was justified on the basis of their considerable data sets, their kind agreement to make that data available and accessible for this research (Alhouli, 2011, p. 115) [1]. The interviews were conducted within two months period, starting from November 2019 to December 2019.

Analysis of the Interviews
The research adopted the interpretative approach in order to examine and identify the present status of the challenges facing the ship maintenance and repair services in the Shipyard (Alhouli, 2011 p. 116) [1]. The findings were presented in summary of tabular presentations in the following sections below (Alhouli, 2011 p. 116) [1].
The first section presents Tables 1-3: showing the biographic data of the participants, summary of the answers provided by the participants, basic functions of ship maintenance and repair services, respectively. It has followed up directly World Journal of Engineering and Technology by examining some major challenges facing the ship maintenance and repair services in the shipyard and finally proposed sustainable management and maintenance strategies for improved repair services of the yard.
In order to identify the challenges faced in the ship repair and maintenance, participants were asked to state the challenges they encounter in carrying out their repair and maintenance services. Table 3, lying beneath Table 2, is showing the summary of the participants' responses and followed with the examination of four selected challenges from the seven challenges stated due to the scope of the study.   [17]. Table 1: above, shows the summary of the targeted senior officers working at various capacities in the shipyard, shipping regulatory and shipping lines interviewed during the study. Given that, their direct and indirect involvement in the ship constructions, ship maintenance & repair services and the commercial operations of shipping is very crucial. Hence, it meant to gather authentic and reliable data for procession that will also contribute academic knowledge and practically-related experience so as to enhance the course of the knowledge dissemination industry.    Competition from Neighbouring Shipyards 1 11% Table 3: above, summary answers by participants (Microsoft Word, 2013) [17]. Table 3 above, shows that 33% of 3 stated lack of equipment as the main challenge among the challenges followed by obsolete equipment 22% of 2 and the rests of the five (5) challenges all 11% each. Overall, the sum up of all these five (5) challenges made up the highest percentage of 55% indicating that there are really issues confronting the shipyard.
The analyses below here are focused on four challenges: lack of equipment, obsolete equipment, lack of skilled labour, lack of capacity, due to the scope and other limitations of the research.
On the issue of lack of equipment, three (3) participants B, C and D responded to the two questions below: "Are there any challenges facing the ship maintenance and repair services of the Tema Shipyard" and "Do you need modern machines"? "Participant B, Not necessarily modern machines but we need more machines".
"Participant C, Limited shipyard and equipment". "Participant D, Lack of tools and equipment to operate the shipyard".
It has emerged from the study that the issue of the obsolete equipment attracted two participants' responses: "Participant i. obsolete equipment". About the issue of lack of capacity, participant C stated that: "vessels of certain length and breadth can't be admitted".
Deducting from the participants' responses, it was unanimously agreed by all the participants that: "the above mentioned challenges facing the ship maintenance and repair services in the Tema Shipyard have substantial negative economic, social, health and environmental implications for the Ghana's maritime industry and other sectors of the economy".
The below are the objective examination of the challenges.

Lack of Capacity
By the recent statistical data, there is a trend of consistent rapid growth in the numbers and sizes of the world merchant fleet due to economic reasons and technological advancement in ships construction. Just within a one (1)  However, the Tema Shipyard, has not undertaken any significant expansion and dredging projects on the quayside and docks in order to accommodate vessels for effective and efficient repair services. The quayside's draught = 6 m and Dock 1's draught = 10 m are lower than the current largest container ship, MSC. Gulsun's draught of 16.5 m.
One participant out of the total number of four (4) respondents confirmed the limited capacity nature of the berths and docks, by stating that: "the yard did not have enough space and deeper draughts berths and docks to host a lot of vessels at the same time". World Journal of Engineering and Technology Thus, the Shipyard is equally losing a lot of ship repair businesses to its competitors even though it is the largest shipyard on the African Continent. Furthermore, a second participant has confirmed that a high number of critical equipment, including the dock 1's two cranes and two winches have also been completely broken down for many years without being repaired. These winches were used to pool in a ship inside the dock 1 for commencement of repairs whilst the cranes performed the lifting off/on some heavy equipment from/to the vessels during repair services at the dock.

Obsolete Maintenance Equipment
These outdated equipment cause a significant delay in the repaired vessels turnaround time with rising costs of operation for the shipowners and operators, the participant stated.
The research has also established that the Shipyard continual usage of a banned silica sand as a blasting abrasive to perform repairs can cause loss of lives because of the silica dust. Silica dust is generated by using blasting abrasives that contain Crystalline Silica, namely quartz rock, river sand and beach sand. This dust contains high levels of toxic air contaminants rising from the blasted base materials, the removed surface coatings, the abrasives used. An employee who World Journal of Engineering and Technology breaths in fine respirable particles of crystalline silica is at risk of developing silicosis disease which attacks the lungs and can result to death (https://www.osha.gov/dts/maritime/standards/guidance/shipyard_guidance.ht ml) [7].
Evidently, the second participant has even confirmed the health hazards involved in using abrasive blasting in his affirmative answers to a repeated question of, you still do sandblasting, which is not? "Yes, we still do sandblasting because it produces dust, the operator accumulatively many years of doing the same job, you are definitely going to expose to health hazards for inhaling the dust pollution, there are organic substances in the system which is environmentally-friendly. But again, we have no alternatives available in Ghana to mitigate the health risk, stated by the participant".

Lack of Equipment
Additionally, the pervasive prevalent of obsolete and malfunctioned equipment situation, automatically results to lack of equipment as one of the major challenges facing the yard.
The Tema Shipyard, over the past years, has not acquired some considerable number of essential and critical ship repair equipment with the exception of just taken the delivery of the dock 2's two pumps to boost its repair services, stated by one participant. It really lacks cranes, folk lifts, especially, the recent modern CNC machines to perform efficiently. According to the participant, the shipyard's warehouse is just like a white elephant. It's virtually empty, no single simple spare part is in it because the yard has no fund to stock it up with spare parts. In effect, it rather causes inconveniences to its customers, by letting them sourcing for spare parts by themselves amid the high risks of insecurity, safe and costs, or the yard must go through a lengthy, expensive and labourious procurement processes to procure spare parts in accordance with the provisions of Ghana's Public Procurement Act, cited by the participant. By the participant, these procurement processes do take them averagely three (3) days to procure spare parts and about three weeks to execute one ship repair job, coupled with accumulative increase in the costs of operation for the customers and quickly asked for Public Private Participation in running the shipyard.
It has also revealed that three (3) participants out of the total number of four Additionally, there seems to be embedded risks in moving mobile cranes from one place to another. Safe working procedures for demobilisation and mobilization of these mobile cranes must be duly followed by competent persons from both parties to guarantee their safe movements, depending on where their services are most needed. Cranes are part of lifting appliances. The International Labour Standards defines ''lifting appliance" "covers all stationary or mobile cargo-handling appliances, including shore-based power-operated tramps, used on shore or board ship for suspending, raising or lowering loads or moving them from one position to another while suspended or supported (Humblet, et al., 2002, p. 591) [25]". The term ''competent person" refers to a person possessing knowledge and experience required for the performance of a specific duty or duties and acceptable as such to the competent authority (Humblet, et al., 2002, p. 589) [25].
The Tema Shipyard could probably not meet its revenue target and in the long run might compulsorily relying on government's subvention, no more internally generated funds to settle its production costs for survival if this issue is not solved.

Lack of Skilled Labour
This research, has also affirmed the widely accepted philosophy that, almost all the various industries, manufacturing, institutions, have been grappling with supply of inadequate skilled labour to competently man their activities. World Journal of Engineering and Technology The Shipbuilding and ship repair industry, has been hard hit by this inevitable phenomenon, because the educational institutions world over, might have lacked the qualified academic staff to do effective teaching. By ECORYS Consulting and Research, the national education systems in both developed and least developed economies, could not even provide sufficient qualified people to man the sector ECORYS Consulting and Research, 2009, p. 114) [3].
Overall, the fast growing age population and workforce, in relation to the present situation and future continuous to pose an increasing threat to the shipbuilding and ship repair industry. It is expected to present worse problems in the future. For instance, in 2030 and 2050, South Koreans' growing age population is expected to rise to 46% and 50% respectively (ECORRYS Consulting and Research, 2009, p. 117) [3]. Most of the Bangladesh's local shipyards are facing lack of machine operators due to the owners' perception that every human resource development programme is a drain, not gain (Iqbal, Zakaria & Hossain, 2010, p. 153) [5]. What kind of future lies ahead? Is there any serious strategic plan to facilitate the accelerated development of the industry? As Alagidede, et al., put it: "unbridled establishment of degree awarding institutions staffed by wholly unqualified and untrained academic staff, and inadequate evaluation of the would be private tertiary institutions by the National Accreditation Board has led to mushrooming of fly-by-night awarding academic institutions in every hook and corner of the country. This development is somehow a reflection of the lousy mind-set of a populace seeking cerificates over skills, and the emphasis on business and management training to the neglect of science and technology has opened a gaping hole in the set of skills required by industry and the genus of graduates produced by the tertiary institutins Alagidede, (Baah-Boateng & Nketiah-Amponsah, 2013, p. 24) [26]".
These may result to low productivity leading to loss of revenue, safety risks of ships which undertake repair services at shipyards, staffed by unqualified and untrained staff because they lack the set of skills right from their various tertiary institutions.
As a matter of fact, the study has identified that Tema Shipyard is not immuned to these issues. It is directly and indirectly affected hence it lacks that ca- However, a participant has made the following startling statements during the study: 1) Participant said, the yard's staff are not fully trained in modern technologies prevail on present day ships thus, limiting their capabilities in ship maintenance and repair equipment.
2) Presently, there is even a lack of expertise to perform in-house services of rewinding motors. What all these means are that, they cause a significant damage to the image and marketability of the shipyard leading to revenue reduction and unsustainability of the yard.
3) "Some of the workers are showing lackadaisical attitudes and reluctant to work more than the prescribed working hours because it is a public-owned institution as stated by the participant". 4) Perhaps, there could be an inherent high risk or unidentified risks in the PSC Tema Shipyard's ship maintenance and repair services. For that matter, the workers will always fear for their lives most and feel reluctant to work even if the other conditions of service are attractive. In short, the workers might not be familiared and satisfied with some of the safe working procedures and technical requirements they must follow to carry out safe ship maintenance and repair services at the drydock in accordance with the current International Labour standards.
One of the technical measures of the International Labour Standards, states that: "workers have the right to participate in ensuring safe work with regard to equipment and methods of work under their control, and to express their views on the working procedures affecting safety 46 (Humblet, et al., 2002, p. 599) [25]".

The Few Drivers Impacting Positively on the Ship Repair Market with Particular Reference to Tema Shipyard
Although the shipyard is bedeviled with these overwhelming challenges, finding antidotes can turn around the fortunes of the Shipyard within the short, medium and long-term periods.

Growth in the International Seaborne Trade
The study has found out that the international seaborne trade is always growing at unproportional rate which has, direct and indirect influence on the shipbuilding and ship repair industry and other sectors of the world economy. It is estimated that the shipping industry continues to carry the 90% of the world's rapid growth of 10.702 billion tonnes of international seaborne trade (Alhouli, 2011, p. 43 [18]. It presents a growing demand for even bigger ships because of economies of scale as cited by Kavussanos and Visvikis (2016). Both Shipowners and Operators now prefer to acquire and deploy biggest vessels so as to carry a high volume of goods with a less operation unit costs over long distance. According to Dong-Wook Song, capacity increased in ship-sized increments, meant that when trade was growing, vessels had to be ordered in multiples dictated by the service frequency, with sufficient capacity to cater for future growth (Song, 2017, p. 3) [27]. Since, more newbuilds will be ordered and supplied with the anticipation of high demand for shipping, it automatically added up to the already existing fleet, thereby increasing the total number of the world fleet.
All these trends are geared towards the strong growth of the world fleet which have an equal growth opportunities for ship repair and conversions.
As ECORRY Consulting and Research stated that: "The strong growth of the world fleet from 660 mln dwt in 1990 to 1,040 mln dwt in 2007 has lead to an equal growth of opportunities for ship repair and conversions". "Worldwide, the annual turnover in ship repair has been estimated at USD 10 -12 billion (ECORRY Consulting and Research, 2009, p. 34) [3]".
Thus, the Tema Shipyard should make good on this consistent growth in the international seaborne trade in tandem with increase in demand and supply of shipping to maximize revenue through rendering of effective and efficient ship repair services.

Introduction of New Environmental Regulations
Attempts to regulate shipping globally, has been a difficult issue for the international community due to a fragmented variety of legal regimes at national levels to harmonisely deal with pollution from marine and shipping operations.
Dong-Wook Song asserted in one of his research articles the difficulties involving in the regulation of shipping because of the international nature of the business, which have wide variety of national and local levels of regulating (Song, 2017, p. 6) [27].
The processes of implementing and enforcing Annex VI. of International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships (MARPOL 1973, modified 1978/1997 (http://www.imo.org/en/KnowledgeCentre/IndexofIMOResolutions/Marine-En vironment-Protection-Committee-(MEPC)/Documents/MEPC.176(58).pdf) [28]. directly and indirectly increase shipbuilding and repair services in shipping industry, because some ships must do repairs of scrubbers installation to make them compliance.
Maersk Line, a Danish shipping giant had developed an investment plan to install technological retrofit, a waste-heat recovery system on its existing fleet aimed at reducing the Line's energy consumption and relative Carbon Dioxide (CO 2 ) emissions in its operations (Song, 2017, p. 13) [27].

N. N. Kambase World Journal of Engineering and Technology
The Tema Shipyard, should see these developments as opportunities and prospects to explore them to the developments of its ship maintenance and repair services.

Proposes Sustainable Management and Strategies for Improved Service Delivery of the Yard
This is the last section of the research and consists of conclusions and further future research request based on the already examined challenges and other pertinent issues raised in the study. This is because their critical evaluations for long-term permanent solutions are anchored on the objectives of this research.

Conclusions
Inferring from the above analyses, shipbuilding and ship repair industry contributes immensely to the development of maritime industry and the world economy. As the increasing growing numbers, sizes and fusion of advanced technologies in the world merchant fleet continues unabated, so do the challenges facing the shipbuilding and ship repair industry worldwide. Similarly, Ghana is not isolated from this international maritime cluster, it also depends substantially on shipbuilding and ship repair industry and other sectors of shipping to run, grow and develop its maritime industry and economy. However, the Tema Shipyard's management is consistently facing serious internally and externally generated financial constraints to revamp the shipyard. It should be stressed that the benefits of investing in expansion and dredging of the yard's capacity outweigh any losses that the limited capacity might have been incurring now. The one way this could be done, is to enter into a concessionaire agreement with any of the technologically advanced shipbuilding and repair yards to invest in the capacity expansion and dredging projects, including the upgrading of all the super infrastructural.
This particular concessionaire agreement should differ from the sea ports developmental concessionaire agreement which primarily cedes long time high share percentage ratio, ownership and management of the sea ports to the investor to operate for a long period of time so as to recoup all the resources invested in the project. In the shipbuilding and repair yard's developmental concessionaire agreement, a clause should be incorporated in the terms and conditions to specifically modify the investor's high share percentage ratio and duration of ownership. The investor must enjoy a high share percentage ratio with short ownership duration period or vice-visa after which it hands over the ownership and management to the host shipyard to continue. This type of a reformed concessionaire agreement may ensure stability in the sector and wins investors' confidence.
The effect of the obsolete equipment on the Tema Shipyard's human resource and immediate environment is a long run overwhelming effect. The way forward, is to acquire the computer numerical control (CNC) machines and other environmentally-friendly approved materials to be able to carry out quality, ef-World Journal of Engineering and Technology fective and efficient ship repair services for their customers. It is very important that the Shipyard should not just focus on getting the $200 million investments to salvage the yard by the estimates of its business proposal. It could also enter into a contract with the marine equipment through collateral arrangements or on installment payment system depending on the terms and conditions of the contract. The Tema Shipyard should organize internal and external marine engineering training for the staff to improve their knowledge to perform efficient ship repair services.
A selected number of staff should be attached to the developed shipyards and recognized marine institutions abroad for further training, including an improved condition of service to retain the few qualified employees and attract other workers from outside.
Overall, establishing marine engineering and maritime affairs basic and Senior High Secondary education in the country will provide a solid foundation to equip the required human resource at the tertiary institutions to be able to man the industry efficiently in the long-term. Presently, the country does not have such speicialised basic and senior high educational institutions running concurrently with the already existing conventional basic and senior high secondary systems in Ghana.

Future Research
Further research should be conducted on the expected and hidden challenges using the regression analysis theories to assess and mitigate their effects on the shipyard.

Conflicts of Interest
The author declares no conflicts of interest regarding the publication of this paper.