………Rector allays fears of insecurity in Zaria
The Nigerian College of Aviation Technology NCAT, Zaria has introduced some incentives to boost the morale of staff of the college.
These include severance benefits and training of staff across cadre which was non-existent before.
Rector of NCAT, Captain Abdulsalami Mohammed in an interview with aviation reporters in Zaria said the college had also sent a request for the review of allowances of staff, adding that no organization can get the best of its staff if they were not happy.
“We have introduced some things like severance benefits to our staff which was non-existence before; we have sent a request for a review of the allowances for the staff”.
“The issue of welfare is very important to me because it is only when people are happy that you get the best out of them and also when you have issues, it also borders on safety when people are not happy, so it’s very important”.
Captain Mohammed also stressed that on the review of the condition of service, the salaries, income and wages commission was handling that
“As you know condition of service for the agencies have been with the salaries, income and wages commission, they have been looked at before then and our own here locally, we have made done changes”.
On the training of staff across all cadre, Captain Mohammed said, “we have introduced a lot of our training for the staff, as you know we have a number of licensed personnel such as engineers, pilots, air traffic controllers, aeronautical communication engineers, all these are licensed personnel who are required by law to undergo recurrent training so we make sure that all the people that need to go for this recurrent training go as at when due and in addition we arrange for other training that we feel would be beneficial to everybody. For instance, late last year, we sent teams of our staff to Public Service Institute, PSIM, in Abuja for training and we intend to make that a continuous process for the staff”.
Speaking on the college as a Regional Training Center of Excellence, RTCE, the NCAT boss said this would given the college the leeway to develop courses in the ICAO annexes, adding this would further put the college in the limelight in the International community.
According to him, “it takes a lot of efforts for any institution to be recognized as a Regional Training Center of Excellence, RTCE, when you have this status, it affords you the opportunity to develop courses in all the ICAO annexes, that’s the advantage, we can also import any courses from any part of the world by ICAO as approved courses, the sky is actually the limit for us, we can eventually run any course as an RTCE”.
He frowns on the misconception in some quarters that Zaria in Kaduna where the college is domiciled was not safe, adding that this was the reason why some countries are reluctant to send their staff and students to study at the college.
Captain Mohammed emphasized that such people were misinformed because the college was safe and secured, adding that currently, the college have, “some foreign students in the college, some from Cameroun, The Gambia who are doing training and we expect more, am suppose to meet the representative of the WACAF region (Western and Central African Region of ICAO) so the countries that are in this region have representative in ICAO, they have indicated interest in what NCAT is doing, am suppose to go and discuss training opportunities with them here”.
He added that, the college had gone a great length to convince prospective students and countries that Zaria was safe.
“A lot of them that I have met recently; they have this misconception that Zaria is insecure and that is the main reason why they are reluctant to come. We have gone to great length to convince them that Zaria is totally safe, we have had a lot of foreigners come and go, such people have been misinformed and some of them claimed that it is their embassies that it is not safe to come to Zaria but we are making effort to disabuse people’s minds in this regard”.
