Professional groups describe Sirika’s last minute appointments in NAMA a sour taste

THE immediate past minister of aviation, Senator Hadi Sirika may have left the stage, but his controversial policies continue to hunt the hitherto peaceful atmosphere in the sector particularly the last appointments and employments he carried out.

Stakeholders across the sector had frowned at the former minister for embarking on the exercise in his last day in the office with the intention of creating problems for the new government.

The latest opponents of the appointments and employments is the amalgamated professional association in the Nigerian Airspace Management Agency (NAMA), consisting of the Nigeria Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA), National Association of Air Traffic and Engineers (NAAE), National Air Traffic Communicatiin Association of Nigeria (NACAN) and Aeronautical Information Management Association of Nigeria (AIMAN).

At the end of the emergency meeting held by the professional bodies to deliberate on the Sirika’s appointment deployment in the agency, the professional groups decided to draw the attention of the government of President Bola Tinubu to what they described as unwholesome action of the former minister, which they said, left a sour taste in the mouth.

The groups unanimously condemned the former minister’s neglect of the Act that established NAMA through his decision to create additional directorates not backed up by the NAMA act within the non-core services.

According to the amalgamated professional associations: “Sad to also note that the new directorates created by fiat do not have any meaningful impact in the operations of the agency. With the creation of two additional directorates and units outside the core service and appointments of non-staff of the agency to head the departments as General Managers; thus side-tracking thoroughbred career personnel from rising through the ranks to such positions, is against extant rules and therefore not acceptable.

“The unwholesome development of creating needless directorate and units has not only led to the neglect of the core service that needs more directorates but also, sadly birthed a regime where less qualified people from outside were recruited to take up supervisory positions and to head units created which practically superimposes them on regular staff in a way that has pathetically portrayed qualified professionals as incompetent.”

The associations also pointed out that despite the subsisting demand by the National Salary, Income and Wages Commission (NSIWC) to ensure the agency has the financial capacity to implement the negotiated Staff Conditions of Service (COS), the former minister had forced the Agency to engage in the indiscriminate employment of staff into non-core service areas of the organization, which has doubled the wagebill thereby having negative serious effects on statutory core mandates of the agency, human capital development, facilities maintenance/procurement and many others.

The professional groups therefore warned that the negative fall-outs of the indiscriminate recruitments if not checked,may likely stall the implementation of the negotiated COS.

“This unwholesome development completely negates the regular staff of the agency as much as it has distorted the progression of core career professionals in the agency. It has therefore; become imperative to point out that the creation of new directorates within the noncore service area is not in the interest of the agency and particularly air safety. In the midst of the lop-sidedness that is the lot of the agency where non-core areas are over staffed as against acute manpower shortage in the core areas, it is sad to also note that to date, the agency does not have a befitting headoffice in Abuja and many staff relocated have no office spaces to operate from.

The associations thereby raised a clarion call for caution and to draw the attention of the new government to the malaise that is gnawing at the soul of air navigation service provision in Nigeria, which is dangerously inimical to the smooth running of the agency saddled with the responsibility of ensuring safety within the country’s airspace.

Among the demands of the professional groups,include the downward review of the 40 percent deduction on the internally generated revenue (IGR) of the agency which presently hampers the progress of the agency.

They also called on the Tinubu-led government to review the recent creation of directorates and appointment into the agency by strictly sticking to the provisions of the act that established NAMA as a guide to the creation of new directorates, employment and appointments of non-agency staff to the rank of career positions even as they reiterated that qualified staff of the agency be given first priority before bringing in an outsider to take up any career-tied appointments in the agency.

‘As a matter of fact, the practice of appointing non-staff to take up career tied positions has demoralised the staff of the agency and should not be encouraged in anyway.

“We note with pride that the agency has staff-strength of highly technical personnel across the core professional cadres with the requisite exposure and training who are competent and capable to pilot the affairs of the agency efficiently. The right and timely motivation of the staff must therefore be encouraged to enable them contribute maximally to the growth and development of the agency vis-à-vis air safety.”