CARMO SANTOS

CARMO SANTOS

“Some are born great. Some achieve greatness. Some have greatness thrust upon them”.

Carmo Santos falls in the second category in which people “achieve greatness”. Though heavily involved in his international freight and cargo business, he takes time to support any Indian national in Kuwait. He has been in Kuwait for the last twenty seven years. He began as an employee of a Kuwaiti shipping establishment as a junior trainee and his job included visiting the vessels at the port, getting the shipping loads offloaded to the transporting vehicles, looking after the crew, and so on and so forth. In this course he learnt many strategies of work.
Carmo was born in Goa in the year 1957 to Army General (Late) Armando Viegas Dos Santos and.Luiza Bertalina Fernandes. After completing S.S.C.E. at Pope John XXIII School, he excelled at the Std. XII at St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai. Thereafter he joined Indian Navy as a Trainee Cadet. On feeling home sick and sea sick he had gave up his job and joined land transport and freight establishments. After gaining brief hands on experience with two land transport and freight establishments in Mumbai, he availed the opportunity of travelling to Kuwait.

In Kuwait, Carmo joined one of the reputed companies M/s. Mohammed Abdulrahman Al-Bahar (International Shipping Department) as a “Tally Clerk” in the year1979. Through his dedication and hard work, very soon he was recognized at Al-Bahar and was promoted as a Supervisor. With his tremendous efforts and support, six months later his position was elevated to Port Captain. For better prospects and his keenness to take every challenging project, he teamed up as Assistant Shipping Manager at Al-Qatami Shipping & Trading Company in the year 1983. Due to Iran-Iraq war in the year 1986 the shipping business doomed and unfortunately his services were terminated at the end of the year.

With a strong determination and always eager to take risks, he established and commenced a shipping and forwarding subsidiary company in February 1987 under the name of Al-Qatami Shipping Co. headquartered at Shuwaikh Industrial Area, partnering with a Kuwaiti and an Indian-Swiss national. The venture boomed with the newly opened cargo facilities in India, Asia and Europe. This company operated well till the year 2000 but due to the death of the two partners the company was closed legally. In the third quarter of 2000 he joined Mahatta Trading Company WLL as a partner.
The company soon grew up and has a strong staff of 100 employees and a large fleet of transportation vehicles and service tools. He has successfully established his own company “Santos Travels” in Margao, Goa and has employed Goans to carry on his travel and exchange business, while he lives in Kuwait.

Carmo is compassionate and aims to help and assist the poor and the needy in Kuwait. He always confronts every type of exploitation, especially labour and community related ones. Numerous cases of passengers’ injustice as well as cargo handling have been solved using Carmo Santos’ contacts and operatives.
In the year 2004, Carmo Santos was unanimously elected as president of the Goan apex organization, Goan Welfare Society – a registered Goan entity under the Societies Registration Act, 1860. During his tenure, he successfully organized the Goa Day 2004 which registered the record of 4000 plus Goans attending it as well as the May Queen and Christmas Tree events. He contributed to several Awards being instituted in support of young Goan students in Kuwait, and has always supported Goan small businesses including florists, travel agencies, authors, websites, mailing lists, Goan organisations’ souvenirs.

Carmo Santos was happily married and the couple had two lovely daughters, Corraine and Christabelle, who are schooling at Carmel’s School in Kuwait and his wife, Carrie, is working as an administrative staff member at the same school. Apart from rendering social service he has various other interests. He loves acting, and so he acted in Konkani dramas during his school days. In the newly produced first Konkani e-cinema ‘Black Nhesop Atanchem Fashion’ (Black is in Fashion) by the award winning producer-director, T-Bush, Carmo Santos has done a guest role.

He is also a good sports person who loves to play and watch football. His other hobbies are reading, listening to music and swimming. Under the Kuwait Indian Football Federation (KIFF), he fielded a team of all Indian youngsters, Santos United. Not only this he is a very good linguist and expresses deep love for his mother-tongue Konkani. He dreams to have Konkani and the Romi Script get recognized. Wonderful! May your tribe multiply!