NAMA To Recruit New Staff

In a bid to improve air safety, the Nigeria Airspace Management Agency (NAMA) plans to continue the regular recruitment and re-training of its personnel in different critical areas.

Such areas include air traffic controllers, air traffic engineers and aeronautical information services with the federal government’s manpower development programme to address the gap in personnel in NAMA, Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN), Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) and the Nigeria Meteorological Agency.

The National Association of Air Traffic Engineers (NAAE) had last week drawn attention to inadequate funding for the maintenance of completed air navigation projects in the industry and called for the provision of operational vehicles for sites with air navigation facilities across the country.

Its president, Comrade Isaac Orishaleye urged the federal government to expedite action on all on-going projects so as to facilitate their inauguration.

He called for adequate provision of funds for the maintenance of all completed project, adding that dedicated operational vehicles should be made available for timely maintenance and intervention to on-site Air Navigation System.

While appreciating government’s strides in the provision of the state-of-the-art (NSIATM) such as TRACON, Total VHF coverage, AK, Automation, WGS-84 projects among other, NAAE reiterated the need for adequate funding of Air Traffic Safety Electronics Personnel (ATSEP) in the industry.

The body also asked for the recruitment of new hands to increase the number of licensed personnel for optimum performance and called for the consolidation of its pioneer training for ATSEP by NCAT, noting that efforts by the government and NAMA towards the WGS-84 Survey was highly commendable.

Responding, NAMA spokesman, Supo Automatable said the agency has a succession plan this year, which it expects some of its engineers to retire, adding that in the last 12 or 15 years, NAMA embarked on intensive recruitment of fresh graduates while last year, it recruited over 40 of engineers and now having some in the field and some gone to NCAT.

“This year, we are in the process of inviting some qualified Nigerians. We have to take into consideration the federal character principle, graduates and fresh graduates whose qualifications date back to four weeks and we are going to invite the qualified ones for a test at the Nigerian College of Aviation Technology (NCAT) to be conducted by the West African Examination Council (WAEC).