Twelve trainees completed the first Mechanical Maintenance class and seven of them have been hired by the Terminal itself.

Workers trained at Porto Itapoá, are already on the job market

The first class for the Mechanical Maintenance Apprentice course, provided by Porto Itapoá with technical support from trainers from SENAI, has already completed the training of students, who are now ready for the job market. Twelve trainees completed the first class and seven of them have been hired by the Terminal itself.

Sergni Pessoa Rosa Jr., the Director of Operations, Technology and the Environment at Porto Itapoá, explained that Porto Itapoá had opened a laboratory specifically for professional training, in July last year. It is a unique and unprecedented facility for the municipality, which specializes in mechanical and electrical maintenance. Before this, students had to travel to the SENAI campus in Joinville for practical classes.

He explained again how important the workers and good training are not just to the company, but also to the community. “Porto Itapoá is where it is today because of people, so it is very satisfying for us to be able to invest in people,” he added.

Four of the students from the first class were hired as Assistant Mechanics and two as Port Operations Assistants.

Porto Itapoá also has an Electrical Maintenance Apprentice course, which began in August 2022 and the first group will have completed their training by August of this year.

New Opportunities

The mechanical maintenance department of Porto Itapoá has taken on four of the new trainees from the Mechanical Maintenance Apprentice class. Guilherme Henrique da Silva is 19 years old and born in Itapoá. He was already interested in mechanics when he heard about the course. At the beginning of the course, he said that he tried to focus on learning and not get his expectations up. “I was so excited when I heard I was being taken on,” he confessed. Now Guilherme is making plans to develop his career. “I want to get into management within the mechanical maintenance area.”

João Pedro Nogueira Peres do Nascimento, meanwhile, despite only being 19 years old, has already experienced plenty of challenges in his life. He was born in Belém, in Pará, and moved to Itapoá with his family when he was only three. He had been dreaming about working at Porto Itapoá while he was on the course. “I was so shocked,” he said about when he received the offer. Now, João Paulo intends to combine his two passions, mechanics and drawing, in his future career. “I want to be a designer in the future.”

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Matheus Henrique Foggiatto Machado (20 years old) also saw the course as an opportunity to learn more about mechanics, which he was already interested in. “I began to enjoy the course more when I realized how complex it was,” he said. He is now seeing new opportunities. “I want to be a mechanical engineer and develop my career at the Port,” he revealed.

A cousin who works at Porto Itapoá told Alcinei Avanzi Jr. (19) about the course for apprentices at the company. The youngster did not waste any time and rushed to sign up. “I learned a lot in this time, finding out how things work in practice,” he explained. He was really keen on the possibility of working at the Terminal, especially by the end of the course. Alcinei has already started working at the company, and he has praised the staff at the Port, “People here are very welcoming”.

Applications

Applications for the course can be made on the Porto Itapoá website, under the “Work with us” option. Applications are being taken from three months before the end of the course. The class that finished in December was originally announced at the beginning of September and publicized in schools, the community (Outdoor Mobile Recorded Announcements), posts on social media and pamphlets.