By Kenneth Jukpor
As part of efforts to curb the level of recklessness of boat operators in Lagos, National Inland Waterways Authority (NIWA) is set to establish a training school in Lagos.
The training school would be a platform to tutor boat drivers and operators in order to curb the excesses of operators whose unreliability lead to frequent boat accidents in the State.
The General Manager, NIWA Lagos Area office, Mrs. Sarat Braimah revealed this in an exclusive chat with MMS Plus newspaper last week, stressing that the Authority would proceed to prosecution of offenders after instituting the training school.
She commended the Managing Director of NIWA, Chief George Moghalu for the endorsing the training institute as one of the Authority’s major goals for 2020.
According to her, it shows NIWA’s position as it would no longer tolerate the level of irresponsibility or allow the lives of Nigerians be taken for granted by unprofessional boat drivers and operators.
Noting that sharing public life-jackets at jetties had emerged a health threat, Braimah disclosed that NIWA distributed disinfectants to boat operators across the Lagos State.
“It is true that sharing life-jackets is a health treat with coronavirus. To address this, we gave out disinfectants to all operators at the jetties and instructed that they utilize them before using jackets”, she said.
On the recent ban on cargo evacuation at the Lagos ports by the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS), she observed that the reversal was achieved after the NIWA Managing Director was able to convince with Customs leadership on the need for reversal.
She admonished Customs to explore other strategies to curb the shortcomings in the process instead of denying the port sector the gains of cargo evacuation via barges.
Braimah is one of the women to be celebrated as United Nation’s Generation Amazons by MMS Woman of Fortune Hall of Fame (WoFHoF).
As part of activities to mark the 2020 International Women’s Day (IWD) at the MMS Hall of Famers’ Day, notable women from Nigeria’s transportation, finance, oil and gas, among other sectors were selected to be celebrated.
