Chinedu Eze
The Nigerian Airspace Management Agency (NAMA) said it has put in place a mechanism to look into the lingering issue of harmonising the salaries and allowances of staff under its payroll with those of their colleagues in other agencies in the aviation sector.
The Managing Director of the agency, Capt. Fola Akinkuotu who revealed this at a town hall meeting, which held at the agency’s headquarters annex in Lagos, said although the issue of harmonisation is as old as the agency itself, there is the need to revisit it as a resolution would boost staff morale and also increase productivity in the long run.
As a first bold step towards achieving the harmonisation, Akinkuotu said management has constituted a committee headed by the Director of Safety Electronics and Engineering Services, Farouk Umar with the mandate to look in-depth at the circumstance of harmonisation, cost of harmonisation and the agency’s ability to achieve harmonisation and its validity.
The NAMA Boss disclosed that the committee had already submitted the said report, assuring that management would immediately convene a meeting to review the report in its totality and examine whether or not there is a disparity and it there was disparity how the agency could pay for it.
He said however that after considering the report, another report would be prepared and presented to government for ratification and expressed optimism that even though the harmonisation issue has lingered for over 14 years, management was determined to tackle it headlong, stressing that “if we plug all the loopholes and cut down on some of the waste and be more prudent in our expenditure, we will make a little more money and it really shouldn’t be that difficult attaining harmonisation.â€
