By Yemisi Izuora-Lagos
The aviation minister Osita Chidoka has said that new training aircrafts would soon be purchased for the Nigerian College of Aviation Technology (NCAT) to enhance its training capacity.
Chidoka who announced this at the occasion marking the 50th anniversary of the college said the college must continue to live up to expectations and that government is at verge of awarding contract to refleet the training aircraft.
He said the purchase of B737 simulator for the college was a testimony of President Goodluck Jonathans transformation programme in the aviation sector adding that the country will rely on NCAT ability for the training of the needed manpower for the country’s aviation sector.
The minister said the zero tolerance for accident in the sector will be achieved through the training and re training of aviation personnel in the industry.
“Under the watch of Mr President we are not only restoring the days of glory of NCAT but changing the frontier to becoming the leading training college in Africa”
He said the next fifty years of the college will be glorious and that it has just started today with the celebrations.
In his speech the Rector of NCAT Capt. Samuel Caulcrick while narrating the history of the college said the college has impacted greatly on the landscape of aviation development in the country and the sub region.
Capt. Caulcrick remarked that NCAT graduates to have always held their own in air safety and high level competence worldwide.
He said the college was offering the aviation industry a significant change that can be proud of and a leadership that can be trusted.
Caulcrick said presently that interim accreditation pending the amendment of the colleges enabling acts has been granted by the National Board for Technical Education for National Diploma and Higher National Diploma.
He said NCAT was in dire need of upgrades for effectiveness adding that most of the administrative buildings and residential quarters required attention.
The Rector enumerated challenges facing the college to include depending largely on subsidise and fiscal allocations from the federation account, adding that the continued operation of the college was subject the economic health.
He explained that the college required infrastructural and equipment upgrade to increase capacity in classrooms and hostel.
Caulcrick called on the Federal government to intervene in the encroachment of the college land by trespassers adding the college needed to repossess the large hectares of land to actualize as a matter of necessity the expansion of the runway where encroachment has become a big threat to NCATs existence for safe operation