NIWA to increase patrol of inland waterways, trains personnel

The Nigerian Inland Waterways Authority (NIWA) has said it intends to increase monitoring activities on the inland waterways in order to carryout regulatory functions aimed at developing the inland waterways system.

The authority is therefore training in-house technicians to ensure all their operational boats are in top condition for the initiative.

The managing director of NIWA, Dr. George Moghalu, who organised the skills acquisition programme said it would fill the gaps in the marine sector and enhance the maintenance of their outboard engines for better service delivery.

The Warri Area manager, Mohammed Dangana, explained that NIWA has boats which are used for patrol for revenue drive and that the boats need to be in top condition, hence the need for NIWA to train in-house technicians to be able to threat mechanical faults that arise.

The training involves Yamaha instructors using classroom sessions and practicals to develop and strengthen the skills and abilities needed by NIWA technicians to sustain owner servicing and maintenance of V6 outboard engines.
NIWA’s Warri Area manager, Mohammed Dangana, said the training would save costs for the authority as there would be no need to outsource services.

“Niwa is an arm of government established to carryout regulatory functions and development of the inland water way system and training is one of the way to empower and upscale the manpower of any organization. So the managing director George Moghalu, who is somebody who has a lot of passion for human capacity development, have put in place this project to train NIWA technicians.

“This is an in-house training for four-stroke outboard engine. The essence is develop the skill of our technicians…so that we can have people that can deal with our engines. We will not need to outsource, we are saving cost by doing this. We will be able to compete with our counterparts in other agencies. We are partnering with Yamaha because it’s one of the best in the manufacturing of machines, so they’re supporting the process as the trainer.”

Area Sales Manager of Yamaha, Abdulmaliq Alebode, said Yamaha had trained over 800 technicians across board and were looking forward to further improving the partnership with NIWA and other government bodies.