Aviation may face fresh crisis over manpower shortage- Expert
The Nigerian lucrative aviation industry may soon face another round of fresh challenges following imminent retirement of Air Traffic Controllers (ATC) next year.
Consequently, the terminal disengagement of many of the personnel is expected to create a serious dearth of Air Traffic Controllers (ATCs) in the sector.
Director of Operations in the Nigerian Airspace Management Agency (NAMA), Mr. Gabriel Akpen made the observation while speaking at the 46th Annual General Meeting AGM/Conference, held by the Nigerian Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA) in Uyo, Akwa Ibom State capital at the weekend.
Akpen said that NAMA is expecting the retirement of about 27 ATCOs who are mostly trained radar controllers; and also occupying top management positions in the directorate.
According to the director, the implication is that another 27 ATCOs will be moved to take their places after retirement, which would eventually reduce the number of fully active field ATCOs by 27.
While stating that much has not been done to address the space that would be created over the years, Akpen warned that a lot have to be done to manage the issue at hand comes 2018.
Akpen equally lamented the challenges of radios used by ATCOs for communication, which he said, has remained an age long issue within the agency. He however, said that they are doing something in synergy with their counterparts in the Safety Electronics and Engineering Services to confront the issue frontally.
The director also decried the non- promotion of deserving officers within the directorate over the years. He, however lauded Captain Fola Akinkuotu for looking into the promotion of deserving officers.
According to him, improvements had been recorded on the Kano sector, while the Lagos is receiving a boost to improve on its range, integrity and reliability.
On trainings, he said during the periods of this management’s assumption of office, various categories of officers had been trained to boost the depleting manpower requirement of the directorate, including: “the training of two sets of 24 Area Terminal Radar Controllers in the last one year, while another batch of 16 controllers are presently in the Nigeria College of Aviation Technology, NCAT, undergoing the same training.”
He added that among other training programmes, 46 new ATCOs were recruited in the last 6 months and are expected to be in NCAT by 11th November this year for training, emphasizing that already, a batch of 15 ATC are in Zaria, Kaduna State, North West Nigeria, for ACC course.
Chukwuemeke Iwelunmo
