The Managing Director of the National Inland Waterways Authority (NIWA); Dr. George Moughalu, on Wednesday said that the agency will recertify boat operators on the nation's inland waterways.
Moughalu said this at NIWA, Lagos Area office during a meeting with key operators in the maritime transportation business.
He said that the move by NIWA will help reduce the rate of boat mishaps on the nation's waterways, even as he lamented the numerous boat mishaps that have occured within a short time frame.
Explaining further, Moughalu reiterated that the essence of the meeting was to inform boat operators that the agency is going to fully implement all the guidelines as regards boat operation.
He said that the agency will have to retrain boat captains, even as he said that the Marine Police will be deployed on the waters to arrest any erring boat operators.
According to him, "the challenges are embarrassing and we cannot sit and watch people lose their lives. We have directed that all the protocols must be observed, you must wear your life jacket and you cannot operate after 6:30pm. You must not carry more than the approved number of person, if you do, we must arrest you. Before a boat can enter our waterways, it must be certified to be sea worthy, we must not accept rickety boats anymore."
"That was why I brought all the stakeholders, we don't want to take chances any more. we must visit all jetties and ensure they comply, we noticed that most of the accidents happened at night and most of those jetties are not under our control. So, as soon as we certify the jetties, we will take responsibility; there will be no excuse anymore. Moving forward, we will ensure that the boat has navigational aid and we have not reviewed that policy of night navigation and ensure that all the boats are sea worthy and that they have all the night navigational aids", he added.
The NIWA boss however said that the agency is working towards ensuring that there is NIWA emergency number at the jetties and on all the certified boats, which according to him, will commence before the end of the week.
"We are setting up the training and retraining of boat captains, we have done that in Warri and we are looking forward to doing it here in Lagos"
"Most of the boats are not designed for night navigation, so we need the buy-in of the stakeholders to properly implement the safety guidelines. We will also continue to ensure that wrecks on the waterways are removed"
"We all have the responsibility of removing wrecks is in our acts, the most important thing is building synergy", he concluded.
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