Nearly 30 - 40% of Indian officers and crew in shipping come from Bihar and the number is growing. Most of them re employed with foreign shipping employers and earn valuable foreign currency for our country.

They have to travel and stay very far from their home and family to appear for competency examinations, various endorsements to get Certificate of Competencies and any other requirement which causes lot of hardship,expenditure and loss of value time that could be spend with their family. 

Number of seafarers from Bihar is growing at a steady pace and the problems faced by Bihari seafarers are likely to be compounded in future if immediate steps are not taken to facilitate  maritime services in Patna.

Further, Patna is engaged in many shipping related activities like Crewing and manning of various shipping companies eg. Elegant Marine Services, Executive Ship Management, Bernhard Schulte Ship Management, Wallems Ship Management, MSC Crewing Services, Training Institutes, Inland waterways Institute (NINI)  and Patna chapter of Company Of Master Mariners of India and Institute of Marine Engineers. 

Patna has two DG approved maritime training institutes  IMER (Institute of Marine Education and Research established in 2000) and NINI (National Inland  Navigation Institute established in 2004). 

In view of hardships being felt by the seafarers and increasing maritime activities in Bihar, we request you to kindly consider our request to open a branch of MMD or at least an examination center at Patna, Bihar and help us make our life easier .

Bihar has a very old marititime history dating back to ancient times when many Chinese travellers visited Patna.                                                                                    As per Wikipedia A number of Chinese travellers came to India in pursuit of knowledge and recorded their observations about Pataliputra in their travelogues.                              One such famous account was recorded by a Chinese Buddhist traveller Fa Hien, who visited India between 399 and 414 CE, and stayed here for many months translating Buddhist texts.   

Megasthenes, the Greek ambassador to India, described the city as the greatest city on earth during its heyday.

Further, presence of very large number of seafarers in and around Patna certainly makes it most eligible place for opening of branch of MMD  and it will also help Patna trace its route on Maritime Map again.