President, National Air Traffic Controllers Association, NATCA, Mr Abayomi has said that the nation’s Airports Control Towers are short staffed and under manned making it risking and dangerous to fly in Nigeria. Agoro said this while speaking to reporters in Lagos on the current challenges threatening the industry. According to him, there are less than 400 Air Traffic Controllers, ATCs, nationwide. This has resulted in only one ATC, most times, being on duty. Agoro said ” We should have at least 600 to 650 ATCs. Let me also tell you, there is no point in leaving one controller on duty in the tower, it is dangerous and we must say it .”
“While a station like Kaduna has less than six Air traffic controllers, definitely they will work only one per shift, but I can tell you that Nigerian Airspace Management Agency, NAMA, has close to 4,000 staff.” He said efforts have been made by the workers union to convert some of the redundant NAMA staff to Air Traffic Controllers. He said ” Even, in some departments you see them drawing a roster, ‘if you come this week, don’t come next week.’ So, what are we trying to say? NAMA at a point, we tried to do internal recruitment just to see whether we can bring some of these redundant staff and train them”. At least, it would help the system, but they don’t want, and those who agreed to convert are regretting that decision today. Many of them, for seven or eight years, they’ve been in one place, which is a great discouragement to others who would want to, and what is NAMA HR trying to do? They are asking ‘who asked you to convert and go there?’. ” “They are now our members, but many of them are regretting that decision. Is that how an organisation should be? And people come to work day-in-day-out doing nothing and after sitting down they are paid”.
He further said , ” They have brought so many people in the agency that are not meaningfully engaged. All they just do is to sit down and we are talking about a critical area where we have gap. I paid courtesy visit to the minister and he said he would not support us to engage contract staff because as you know some of our members do come back on contract. The minister said we can try and engage the younger ones. We said yes the association prefers that because NAMA will train them and they will have a long working span, only for us to now hear that 40 people have been engaged. It’s shameful.”. On the current working environment for ATCs, Mr Agoro also revealed that, The working environment is becoming deplorable… As I am talking to you now, some airports do not even have functioning equipment. Even, the Kaduna we are talking about, Kaduna does not have control tower what they are using there is watch room (for fire fighters), which is not built for that purpose and we have been calling on the government to do something”.
“We go to Sokoto, once it rains today, controllers will go to look for umbrellas to sit at the control tower and what is it, some of the control towers attached to the terminal buildings some were ceded to FAAN, while those standing alone were with NAMA, but we have approached the two organisation. The lift too, NAMA will be waiting for FAAN to put it in order, FAAN will say is it our staff that are working there and that is simply due to bureaucracy and you now discover controllers will continue to suffer. We are still battling with terrestrial radio frequency, communication here and there. Calabar is there; there is no airport you will go to today that you would say things are working 80 per cent,” the NATCA President fumed.
