The Nigerian Airspace Management Agency (NAMA), says 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/CEO of NAMA, Capt. Fola Akinkuotu, who revealed this in a town hall meeting held at the agency’s headquarters annex in Lagos, said although the issue of harmonisation was as old as the agency itself, there was the need to revisit it as a resolution would boost staff morale and also increase productivity in the long run.
As a first step towards achieving the policy, Akinkuotu said management had constituted a committee headed by the Director of Safety Electronics and Engineering Services, Mr. Farouk Umar, with “the mandate to look in-depth at the circumstance of harmonisation, cost of harmonisation, ability to achieve harmonisation, the validity of whether we have been harmonised or not, and then make a report and present to management.”
He disclosed that the committee had already submitted its report, assuring that the management of the agency would convene a meeting to “review the report in its totality and examine whether or not there is a disparity. We will also discuss if we can pay for it and if not, how do we move this forward.”
He said that after considering the report, another report will be prepared and presented to government for ratification. Akinkuotu expressed optimism that even though the harmonisation issue has lingered for over 14 years, the present 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.”