The Management of the Nigerian Airspace Management Agency, NAMA has commended the National Association of Air Traffic Engineers, NAAE for saving millions of naira for the Agency in the maintenance of it’s surveillance facilities.
The Managing Director,NAMA, Captain Fola Akinkuotu who gave the commendation at the 2018 Annual General Meeting of NAAE in Lagos said the engineers have been working assiduously to ensure constant power supply 24/7 to navigation aids in the country.
Captain Akinkuotu who was represented at the event by the Director Operations in NAMA, Mr. Idowu Ogunfowora noted that the installation of solar which many were sceptical about when the idea was muted 4 years was seamlessly carried out by the engineers which today had kept the surveillance facilities functioning optimally.
” this has saved a lot of money for the agency and I want to commended you for this”.
Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Aviation, Alhaji Sabiu Zakari who declared the event opened said all Airspace personnel must work together always to ensure air safety in Nigeria.
Represented by Mr. Clement Awobami, Alhaji Zakari said, pilots, air traffic Controllers depend on each other to promote safety.
“If your facilities are not working, the air traffic Controllers cannot work and pilots will find it difficult to do their job, so, you must all work together, your are interdependent”.
In his address of welcome, the NAAE National President, Engr. Ishaya Dung explained that their job involved the installation, maintenance,and withdrawing Service Communication, navigation, surveillance and Air traffic management (CNS/ATM) system.
He said the meeting was to,” rob minds and brainstorm by taking stick of our activities in the past year and make projections for the year ahead and generally for the future. This pertinent because we live in a digital age with constant evolution of technologies which present their own challenges”.
He emphasized that despite that the Air Traffic Safety and Electronics Personnel, ATSEP were licensed, they were yet to get the recognition of the ICAO annex 1, adding that this was affecting them psychologically.
“Sadly, we are yet to be recognized in ICAO Annex 1. This has psychological effect on all ATSEPs worldwide making it a potential safety concern”.
He noted that because of this lack of recognition, the body decided to choose this year’s theme: ‘AVIATION SAFERTY-THE ATSEP LINK’.
“This informed our choice for the theme for this year’s edition of our Annual General Meeting, ‘AVIATION SAFETY-THE ATSEP LINK’. We hope that the ICAO General Assembly under the leadership of Dr. Olumuyiwa Bernard Aliu (ICAO President), will consider our inclusion when we present our safe case during the next ICAO General Assembly in 2019”.
