The
House Committee on Maritime Education, Safety and Administration yesterday
threatened the management of the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency,
NIMASA for under utilization of its approved N42 billion capital project vote
for 2017.
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l-f: Member of the House of Representatives Committee on Maritime
Safety, Education &
Administration, Hon. Jones Chukwudi Onyereri,
Deputy Chairman of the
Committee Hon. Solomon Adeelu Ezinwa,
Director General NIMASA,
Dr. Dakuku Peterside and Chairman of the
Committee, Hon. Mohammed Umaru Bago, during
the oversight visit
of the committee to NIMASA in Lagos.
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Making the threat during its oversight function at the agency head office in Lagos, the Chairman of the Committee,
Umaru Bago Mohammed, frowned at the fact the apex maritime regulatory agency
was only able to utilize N5 billion of the approved fund.
He noted that unless the agency improves on the utilization of the fund, the
committee may be forced to approve only the amount spent by the agency in their
next budget. Bago however commended the management of the agency for responding
positively to its queries on the welfare of the staff on the agency which he
said was important if the maritime body must achieve it mandate.
According
to him, “It is not right that we approve funds for you and you do not spend it.
If you do not spend your money on capital projects, we will gave you less in
the next budget,” he noted.
“It
is a shame that we give them money to spend and because of bureaucratic
argument, they are able to spend, they should not expect us to appropriate
monies for them next time.
So
we have promised as a Committee and as a parliament, that anybody we give
resources to spend and refuse to spend, we will only give them in the next
appropriation the percentage of they have spent in the previous year”.
We
have threatened NIMASA that we will give them zero allocation in 2018 if they
do not spend that money.”
While
commending NIMASA’s effort in the training of cadets, the House Committee
chairman stressed the need for the maritime agency to speed up its effort in
acquiring vessels for training as it has planned.
He
also commended the agency’s effort to bring in the floating dockyard which he
observed would save thenation huge revenue that the private ship owners
currently spent on dry docking of their vessels across the sub-region.
Responding,
the Director General of NIMAS Dakuku Peterside, explained that the management
has promoted over 800 staff recently in its bid to motive the staff to achieve
it set goals. Peterside also said that the agency has sent 289 cadets for
training abroad as part of the National Seafarers Development Programme, NSDP.
On the issue of capital projects, he assured that the agency would work at
improving the spending in that direction.
The
NIMASA boss assured the visiting National Assembly members that the floating
dock would be arriving the country in the next few weeks, though he was not
specific on the time frame.
He
pointed out that NIMASA is currently recognized internationally as a maritime
administration because of the constant training and re-training of the agency’s
staff to keep them up to date in the performance of their duties.
The
NIMASA DG noted that before now, the mention of the name of the agency was
synonymous with corruption but that the situation has since changed with the
present management in place.
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