Determined to enhance the performance of boat operators, Association of Tourist Boat Operators and Water Transport of Nigeria (ATBOWTON), has concluded plans for the training of boat operators.
The Secretary General of the association, Mr. Daniel Eze, disclosed this recently in a chat with Shipping Position Daily in Lagos.
He acknowledged that most of the operators do not obtain formal education before coming into the profession, adding that some of them started as fishermen before suddenly turning into boat operators.
Justifying the presence of illiterates, he said, “in every sector you will have both the educated and non-educated ones. It is just like what we see in the road transport system. We have so people who are educated and are into transportation business while we also have the ones that are not educated doing the same business. There is no place in the Nigerian constitution that states what the person must possess before he becomes a boat operator. But on our won part, we are working towards training some of them that are not actually educated in the eyes of the people. But if you say most of them are not educated I agree with that because most of them came from a background of fishing and suddenly becoming an operator. Some also learned from their fathers or uncles and they start operating a boat”.
He maintained that their education is all about how to master boat driving which according to them is more important than formal education even as he said that anybody that wants to drive a boat must have at least a minimum of Quarter Master.
He also maintained that there is no minimum qualification for you to be a boat rider.
“Here the education is all about how they will master that boat driving which is more important to us that any formal education. For now we conduct training for them from time to time because when you talk real education you have a qualification and when you are finally employed in a company the company will still give you their own training. Every profession has its own training; it is the basic thing that everybody needs.
We don’t have a minimum qualification but it is expected that everybody that wants to drive a boat must have a minimum of a Quarter Master that is the minimum qualification for anyone that wants to handle the both”
Speaking on their training programmes, he said that the executive has to fix a date for the event, as he said that they just concluded one recently.
“The executive will seat and plan for the ideal date for the training and communicate that to the people responsible. We just concluded one last week it is not a weekly program we do it when we are free. At time it can come quarterly or monthly any time we sit and look at our schedule we can decide to organise one. Like this year we have already conducted one and we are still looking at conducting another one. For years now we have not had anything like this so we felt it will be very necessary for them to be trained as a sort of manpower development” he concluded.
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