The Director General of the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA), Captain Musa Nuhu said the agency is in dire need of highly skilled personnel to efficiently regulate the aviation industry and ensure air safety, but such needed personnel shun the authority because it cannot offer good remuneration.
Nuhu explained that such industry professionals go to airlines where they are paid about four times what they could earn in NCAA and others chose to travel overseas and work.
He said the agency is constrained because it is a government agency operating under public service rules, so it maintains civil service salary structure, adding that currently the agency has young and retiring technical but needs high qualified and experienced middle cadre personnel to expand and sustain the standard of aircraft and airline inspection to ensure that the safety status already attained is sustained and surpassed.
Nuhu who spoke to aviation correspondents in Lagos yesterday was reacting to earlier request made by the Airline Operators of Nigeria (AON) asking that NCAA be removed from civil service salary structure in the recent letter the body wrote to the Senate.
“NCAA is a government agency and not an independent body; we operate under public service rules and government salary structure. We have very experienced pilots with minimum of 4,000 flying hours. That is the recommendation to be a flying instructor, but our pay is poor when compared to what the industry is paying. Our pay within the civil service structure seems to be great, but if you compare that to the closest we need from the industry, our pay is poor. So, people will rather go and work in the industry as a captain, earn some millions of naira, than to come here and earn less than N1 million.
“The only people that come to work for NCAA as flight operation inspectors are people who have retired from flying. People who have attained the age of 65 years or more and we employed them on special contracts and even as a special contract staff, when you get to 70 years of age, you are supposed to leave. AON is complaining because of the delay in attending to them because we don’t have enough personnel,” Nuhu said.
“We need to find a way of balancing this so that the system gets enough technical personnel to function. We are however, working on the government to see how things can be addressed. There is a limit we can pay. We are working with the Ministry through the Minister of Aviation, Head of Service and Salaries and Wages Commission to see how we can address this,” the Director General added.
Meanwhile, Captain Nuhu has reacted to the theft of aircraft equipment in Arik Air leased airplane parked at the domestic terminal of the Murtala Muhammed International Airport (MMIA), Lagos, known as MMA2 and attributed it to insiders job, noting that a person or persons who knew the aircraft well accessed it and stole the equipment.
“For all I can say, investigations are ongoing on the incident, but I won’t say it was a vandalisation. What happen is that somebody who obviously knew where the aircraft is, somebody who knew obviously what he was doing, went to the E and E2 Compartments, walked in there and removed a component professionally without damaging anything. So, figure out that for yourself.
“As far as I am concerned, it is an ongoing investigation. So, we will wait for the outcome of the investigation. It is very clear that I cannot go the very technical part of the aircraft and remove something there. I must know something about it and I am not new to the system. Whoever did that job knew what he was doing. “The security agencies are investigating the issue. Unfortunately, these issues happen everywhere. It is not the best to happen in your country, but it has already happened and we are investigating it and we will put in measures to ensure that it doesn’t happen again,” the Director General said.
