The Minister of Transport Rotimi Amaechi has said that the ministry will rather scrap the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency that continue outsourcing its core responsibility.
Amaechi while briefing the Senate Committee on Marine Transport headed by Abubakar Kyari said that NIMASA was set up basically to provide safety.
He stressed that the agency could not then outsource the core responsibility for which it was set up.
`` We have to get NIMASA to get back to its core responsibility,should NIMASA actually outsource its responsibility? If it does it has no business being NIMASA we should just scrap it and allow the ministry to outsource it directly.
``The main reason why it was created by law was for the responsibility that it has outsourced.
``So we need to first address the contract, and possibly address NIMASA and all these will come out when we audit NIMASA,” he said.
He said that the ministry’s visit to NIMASA only showed that the agency was doing nothing as only three doctors and a stethoscope were found in its search and rescue center.
He said that the agency was only just installing the instrument that could be used to locate vessels whenever there is an accident.
``So what happened to all the money that they have been making yearly, NIMASA makes N63 billion annually, what happened to that money?,” he queried.
Ameachi while speaking on the carbotage fund expressed displeasure at how it was initially managed and disbursed without any effective machinery for accountability.
He decried that about N300 billion which was disbursed by the Federal Government in the aviation sector was merely just wasted and embezzled.
``Our experience in the aviation industry is that some amounts of money was also released by the Federal Government, about N300 billion about three years ago.
``So people in the aviation industry collected the money and the money has just disappeared, in fact there is one man who collected N32 billion and left the country.
``One of those who took our money is walking on the streets of Nigeria and nothing has happened to him and the airline is dead, he does not even have the courtesy to say that the airline is dead,” he said.
He therefore called for the revisiting of the laws or policy on Carbotage so that there will be more accountability and people will not just collect government money and not put it to good use.
He said that the ministry currently had N52 billion in the Treasury Single Account of the CBN as Carbotage Fund but will only be released to ready investors who meet guidelines.
No comments:
Post a Comment