National Institute of Maritime Affairs (NIMA) organized the certificate award ceremony on 12th January 2022 for the participants of the 4-days short course on Integrated Coastal Management (ICM), held from 20th to 23rd December 2021. Vice Admiral (Retd) Khawaja Ghazanfar Hussain HI(M), Director General BUKC, attended the ceremony as Chief Guest and awarded the certificate amongst the participants. He appreciated the efforts of team NIMA for organizing short course on such an important topic. However, he suggested to have a field orientation of the participants in future. He added that further activities such as seminar, workshops and social campaigns should also be arranged for continued awareness raising for the professionals as well as for the wider community.
The formal proceeding started with the Recitation from the Holy Quran. In the opening remarks Commodore (Retd) Ali Abbas SI(M), Director NIMA Karachi, welcomed the Chief Guest, speakers, participants of the course, and all other attendees. Director NIMA-K highlighted the importance of ICM for the development and management of coastal areas. He appreciated the active participation of all attendees throughout the course and praised the speakers individually for sharing their valuable knowledge on ICM, as it is a need of the hour, especially for Pakistan. He was enthusiastic to plan further activities in the future to promote coastal zone management.
The participants also shared their commendable remarks about the content and layout of the course and gave useful feedbacks for future similar events/activities. At the end, Chief Guest awarded the certificates to the participants of the course and distributed souvenirs among the lecturers to praise their efforts.
The course was organized in collaboration with Bahria University and was deliberatively arranged virtually to cover participants from large demographic locations to educate the maximum number of individuals on the topic of ICM. The course highlighted the importance of managing the coastal areas of Pakistan. Dr Pirzada Jamal Siddiqui was the course coordinator. The speakers of the ICM course were renowned in their knowledge areas and held years of experience. The course included international and national speakers who shared knowledge about the importance of the coast and its effective management to contribute to the improvement of the ecosystem and economy of a country.
