Investigations carried out by Shipping Position Daily last week revealed that despite efforts of the management of the National Inland Waterways Authority (NIWA) boat operators especially at Liverpool jetty still ferry passengers without the mandatory life jackets.
Our correspondent who monitored activities at the Liverpool jetty for over two weeks observed that even school children and adults are ferried across the waters by the operators without any life jacket.
It was also observed that the few life jackets on some of the passengers are tattered and old.
Most of the boats available at the jetty are rickety and cannot pass standard test, even as it was observed that most of the operators are illiterates.
An attempt to speak with the executives of the jetty was not successful as none was available as at the time our correspondent visited the jetty.
An operator who does not want his name in print said that the reason some people are not wearing life jackets is because they are not enough.
He however said that because the jackets are old,some people do not like using them when making use of the boats.
It will be recalled that the new Managing Director of NIWA, Dr. George Muoghalu, in a recent event in Lagos, had said that the agency has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with an American company to provide life jacket for all the jetties in Nigeria.
He reiterated that the idea is to ensure that nobody makes use of the boats without using life jackets, even as he said that the agency is also working towards ensuring that non-certified boat operators do not have their ways on the waterways.
“A few weeks ago, about three weeks ago NIWA signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with an American company that is going to supply life jackets on all jetties in the country. We have signed the MoU and they are working on it. Because we want to make it a crime for you to board a vessel in any of our jetties without being properly kitted"
"We want to make life jackets available at all waterfronts, so that everybody will not give us excuse that because there was no life jacket they have to enter the water without that, we don't want to accept that as an excuse. And that is why we have gone this far"
"We have also places a ban and directed our Area Offices that no vessel that do not have navigational aid should be allowed to ply late in the night or early in the morning" he concluded.
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