[Varley]

Although I have little exposure to Ukrainians on the commercial stage the first Eastern Blocker that we (Denholm) recruited as an individual was Ukranian (we had had Polish crews for some time and later Bulgarian).

Procedures required me to interview him and we applied for a visa to visit the Isle of Man. It is at this point we learn that we have our own immigration authority without running whose writ HM's men in the Ukraine cannot issue said visa.

Days turned to weeks with the placee in the place for which our candidate was intended getting progressively itchy. Our authorities refused to say if they had been contacted by any of HM's Men in Odessa let alone the progress of any application (we had the cartoon visualisation of a wide brime hat moving from bank to bank knocking to ask if they had a Mr. Ostapenko booked to deposit much laundered moolah in the near future.

In the end we asked HMsMiO if he could go the London "Wait I'll just get the file......... That's OK old man just tell him to come in tomorrow" and that is where I had to go to hold the interview.

He was obviously far better educated in marine electricity than I was and looked increasingly insulted at the easy nature of the questions asked. After the interview he told me he had been 'one the beach' for a year employed by the Ukranian authorities to vet their certificates of competence and also that he would not work for a Western crewing agent as their local representatives were all on the take.

I was very pleased to use him for trouble shooting that otherwise I might have to have done and although he would not willingly come back to deepsea conditions after offshore (and why should he).

I tried to get the technical interview procedure scrapped for any candidate with an Eastern Block (and particularly Ukranian) CoC but to no avail so spend several 'phone calls chatting to better qualified men than myself and looking forward to being able to do even less work.

It was not long after that that I came across a Ukranian candidate with a licence not a CoC. It seems the market had forced a lowering of standards and one could pick one of these up from the nearest Port Captain providing one had a neon screwdriver showing form one's top pocket.

That does not mean that the youngsters had it all their own way. On the few occasions my assistance was requested experience often did hold sway.

Andrej did get one answer wrong. (What happens to the load on a centrifugal pump when you shut in the discharge valve?).The only other candidate that did as well was another of those rare exotic creatures, an electrical superintendent (returning to sea for the money) stranger still he was a Brit.