ICAO VISIT: NAMA trains personnel on safety strategies

As part of its efforts aimed at impressing the aviation inspection team from the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO), the management of the Nigerian Airspace Management Agency (NAMA) has concluded plans to embark on the training of various categories of its workforce on safety management.

Though the agency claimed the programme is aimed at enhancing safety of air navigation in the country, insider sources say it has to do with a recent ministerial directive that all essential agencies, led by NAMA, should put their houses in order for the much expected ICAO visit before the end of second quota of 2017.

But while signing the NAMA Safety Policy and Commitment to Safety Management, on Thursday, the NCAA Managing Director, Capt. Fola Akinkuotu, was said to have played down the order as it affected safety standard.

He rather stated that safety management had become key in a highly sophisticated and dynamic industry such as aviation, stressing that “aviation has no room for I am sorry.”

He said management was putting a machinery in motion to drastically reduce or eliminate incidents while maintaining zero tolerance for accidents. Akinkuotu also charged top management staff of the agency to buy into the NAMA Safety Policy and also ensure that the message cascades down to the entire staff, adding that “everything we do in the agency, one way or the other impacts on safety.

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“We must, therefore, focus not only on the obvious, but even the non-obvious things, and by this, every NAMA staff should key into the safety policy and also be passionate about it.”

The training is said to be scheduled as to dwell on vital areas, including: Safety Audit of Air Traffic Services; Safety Oversight Management and Practical Preparation and should not interrupt flights.

The programme is part of the agency’s programme aimed at meeting requirements of Universal Safety Oversight Programme (USOAP), an affiliate of Air Traffic Management Safety Investigation and Analysis of ICAO.

Other targeted strategies are expected to involve equipping critical staff of the agency with the capacity and proficiency to investigate and analyse air traffic incidents with a view to mitigating or eliminating future occurrence.

A senior Air Controller official, Mr. Reuben Ukah, said the signing of NAMA Safety Policy is also meant to be for the compliance with the prescription of ICAO Document 9859 (Safety Management Manual) Annex 19 (Safety Management Systems) which requires that the Chief Executive Officer of an aviation service provider must sign a commitment to safety as the Accounting Executive for Safety Management Systems (SMS).

 

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