FG urged to increase retirement age of ATCs to 65 years

THE Nigeria Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA) has urged the Federal Government to increase the retirement age of Air Traffic Controllers (ATC) from the current 60 years to 65 years in order to give room for newly recruited ones to catch up from the old hands before leaving the system.

The national president of NATCA, Mr Abayomi Agoro, made this call while highlighting the importance of world Air Traffic Controllers Day in Lagos.

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According to Agoro: “What the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) stipulated is about 700 air traffic controllers and as at that time, I don’t think we had up to 27 airports and airfield as we have right now and some states are still trying to build new airports, so, it means that the less than 350 air traffic controllers operating now is inadequate and we also try as much as possible to tell the government to increase the retirement age of air traffic controllers from 60 to 65 in order that it can bring a kind of balance”.

The NATCA President used the occasion to call for the release of special  fund to assist the Nigerian Airspace Management Agency (NAMA) to strengthen. Human capital development saying this will help in the training of technical staff for subsequent safety enhancement.

His words: “I don’t want government to leave everything in the hands of NAMA alone. For example, we are trying to let government understand that there is need to give NAMA additional funds to train not only air traffic controllers but all the technical professionals in the agency whereby maybe they should get some allocation from the Bilateral Air Service Agreements (BASA) fund, there is need for human capital development and NAMA alone cannot shoulder the responsibility, so I feel the government should do that maybe by allocating a special fund dedicated for training mostly the technical staff”.

The NATCA president called on airlines to work assiduously with the association by partnering them as it was the only way to move the aviation industry forward.

Agoro who said aviation remained one of the key areas to improve on the GDP of the country, noted that the country with its mineral and human endowment will beat Ethiopia and other countries surviving on aviation if aviation was well managed in the country.

On the challenges facing the ATCs, the NATCA boss enumerated radio communications, surveillance systems and training and retraining as their major challenge but expressed the hope that the Aeronautical Information Service (AIS) automation will soon ease the problem of communication in the country’s airspace.