NAMA moves to enhance runway safety

The Nigerian Airspace Management Agency (NAMA) has pledged to collaborate with the newly-inaugurated Runway Safety Teams at the nation’s major airports in a bid to enhance safety of air navigation on runways and associated airside facilities.

In a brief remark, while receiving members of the Lagos Runway Safety Team, at the agency’s headquarters, in Lagos, the Ag. Managing Director, Engr. Emma Anasi, said the inauguration of runway safety teams was “another giant step towards enhancing safety of air travel particularly along the airside, where the most critical phases of flight take place,” stressing that as one of the requirements of the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO), runway safety teams are indispensable, because of their ability to closely monitor and give prompt attention to safety issues arising from the airside like the derubberization of the tarmac.

Anasi, who was represented on by the Ag. Director of Operations, Mr. Ifeanyi Okwor, assured the team that NAMA – as an agency, whose mandate borders on safety of air navigation – would partner and support runway safety teams in the country to realise their objectives.

The leader of the Lagos Runway Safety Team, Mrs. Ngozi Njoku of the Safety Department at the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN), solicited the agency’s support in the provision of office accommodation, operational vehicle for runway inspection, customised reflective jackets, training of personnel and other logistics to ensure effective takeoff of their operations.

Meanwhile, the Nigerian Airspace Management Agency (NAMA) has concluded arrangements with the Administrative Staff College of Nigeria (ASCON), Badagry, on the training of various categories of personnel in the agency.

The training, which would focus largely on administrative processes, procedures and practices, is intended to treat modules such as Strategic Management, Public Service Rules and Regulations, Financial Rules and Regulations, Tax Obligations and Liabilities, Policy Formulation and Analysis, Budgeting in Public Sector, Due Process and Procurement in Public Service, Improving Service Delivery in the Public Sector among others.

Speaking in Lagos, when she led a delegation to NAMA headquarters, the ASCON Director of Studies, Mrs. Meg Oshionebo, said NAMA as an Air Navigation Service Provider needed to align its administrative processes and procedures properly with its mandate, in order to ensure efficiency in service delivery.

Anasi noted that there was a need for “the business of NAMA to be carried out in an orderly fashion and in accordance with public service rules,” adding that the training aims at inculcating in the workforce the basic principles and procedures of carrying out their functions – including sanctions to those who breach these rules “and we believe that ASCON has both the capacity and expertise to give us the needed training required to drive the agency towards increased productivity as well as excellence in service delivery.”