Air Traffic Controllers have lamented the dearth of members, saying the Nigerian Airspace Management Agency (NAMA) needs over 600 of them.

In a related development, the controllers alleged that the Kaduna Airport lacked a functional control tower to separate airlines just as they have decried the deplorable conditions in airport control towers around the nation’s airports including Katsina, Kano, Sokoto, and Calabar among other aerodromes.

They stated that no airport in the country had up to 80 per cent functioning equipment.

This is just as they have said that the country needs no fewer than 650 controllers nationwide to meet the needs of existing and new airports popping up, a statistics hindered because NAMA employs over 4000 staff of which the core professionals are less than 400, inadequate to meet present need President of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA), Abayomi Agoro, who alongside his team spoke to journalists last night, revealed these shocking realities from the lack of a control tower at the Kaduna Airport to the lack of a urinary system at the Katsina control tower and failed equipment in Kano, stressing that ATCs bear the brunt of the dilapidated system.

He said: “The working environment is becoming deplorable. I say any of your members are free to walk into our working facilities you’d get an on-the spot assessment, as I am talking to you now, some airports do not even have functioning equipment.

Even the Kaduna we are talking about does not have a control tower. What they are using there is a watch room (for firefighters), 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, controllers will go to look for umbrellas to sit at the control tower.

Some of the control towers attached to the terminal buildings were ceded to FAAN while those standing alone were with NAMA but we have approached the two organisations just like the lift too.

NAMA will be waiting for FAAN to put it in order, FAAN will say is it our staff that is working there? And that is because of that 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,” he said.

Buttressing his point, Deputy Vice President, NATCA, Ahmed Adamu Bello, spoke on Katsina, expressing dismay at the working conditions, saying there was no system to answer nature’s call unless the ATC leaves the building, which would be a breach of professional ethics.

”In addition, you mentioned Katsina. Katsina today where you have a one-man watch and there is no facility for him to go and ease himself he is a human being, just to urinate, are we saying he is going to get a bottle?

“Or descend the tower? If he descends, he is in breach of his professional ethics so what do you expect that person to do? In Katsina no restroom was provided, nothing, we are not just making claims, all these are verifiable these are facts that are there.

“Also, you mentioned Kano; Kano, fine building, that is all. The facility inside unfortunately is a failure. Verify everything we say everything we mentioned here, we are not being emotional we are angry because if the system demands I put my whole life into it,

“I expect the system to provide me the working tools to be able to do that. I’ve not spent close to two years ab-initio in the training school for me to qualify as a professional for me to be frustrated by a system that does not want me to give my best,” Bello said.

(New Telegraph)

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