NIGERIA MASTERWEB DAILY NEWS

*Nigeria: Commercialize NAMA Now
........For Efficiency & Transparency Says Air Controllers

By Nosa Osula-Aituamen

The National Association of Air Traffic Controllers, NATCA, has called for the full commercialization of the Nigerian Airspace Management Agency (NAMA) for efficient service delivery.

At a news conference in Lagos to commemorate the International Air Traffic Controllers Day, President of the Association, Alhaji Jubril Haske said this would help to bring about transparency and accountability which is necessary for efficiency in the running of the agency.

According to him, wastages would be eliminated and other inefficiencies inherent in a typical government agency. ( Continues below..... )

Photo Above: An Airborne Plane

Alhaji Haske emphasized that the provision of air traffic control services was capital intensive and therefore, required a cost-recovery business model for efficiency in harnessing and allocation of resources.

"We need to commercialize NAMA through a government statutory provision right now is established as a government parastatal like most other government agencies that are not necessarily aviation based or aviation bias or aviation centered but if you look at the trend globally in the last 15, 20 years the trend has been to either privatize like we have in Canada, partial privatization like we have in UK with the Department of National Air Traffic Services (DNAT) or the model that we have in South Africa where you have ATNS that is 100 percent government owned but it is a company that is run just like every other private company, every year they are required by law to publicly publish their statement of account which are also audited by private accounting auditing films. ( Continues below..... )

Photo Above: Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Lagos, Nigeria.

According to him, "Now the advantage in that is that it brings a lot of transparency in how the organization is run, it brings accountability which is necessary for efficiency, it equally eliminate wastages and other inefficiencies inherent in a typical government bureaucracy so what we are asking, what we are advocating for is for NAMA to be fully commercialize based in line with these other examples that I have given and I am sure that this can be done through a statutory provision in which case the agency will simply operate like a commercial entity operate, the main concern of course is safety but then you are also going to put certain mechanisms to ensure that you recover cost, if for example an agency buys 20 VOR and install it in the airport, you must also have a plan as to how you are going to recover the cost of procuring and installing those 20 VORs or 20 ILSs you know we feel if you do that it will serve the interest of safety and efficiency better" ( Continues below….. )

Highlighting inadequacies in functional communication, navigation and surveillance equipment including insufficient Training and retraining programmes, poor remuneration and unsatisfactory job career structure as some of the problems they are grappling with, Alhaji Haske wants the Federal Government to expedite action to address these problems.

Speaking on ‘Pay As You Go’ Alhaji Haske noted that the Association was in total agreement with its introduction, as a lot of money had been collected with its introduction.

"Well I am not in the position to say,,,, but all I can say is that yea, it is necessary, we fully identify and support with that policy thrust by NAMA to recover cost I mean it is absolutely necessary and I am quite sure that you are aware that there are so many airspace users who have not paid for services rendered dating back to years, three years, seven years and what have you so in order to prevent that I think that is why the agency now said ok we will do pay as you go, you pay as we provide the service so those ideas of saying ok the money we are owing is seven years old it should be waste over percentage will not arise and like I said ion the statement that I read aviation generally is capital intensive if you are expecting modern navigational aids, modern Radar systems and what have you, there must be cost this era of seeing air traffic services as part of social services I mean is gone."

Nosa Osula-Aituamen (Aviationreport)

MASTERWEB HOME - NIGERIAN NEWSPAPERS - NIGERIA NEWS HEADLINES - WORLD NEWS HEADLINES