Widening Knowledge Gap In NPA Worries Bello-Koko, To Commission Simulator Building

The Managing Director of the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) has expressed worry over the increasing knowledge gap in the agency. This is even as he promised to commission the agency’s simulator building to bridge the knowledge gap in NPA at lower cost.

Speaking to maritime journalists recently in Lagos, the NPA’s Managing Director explained that using the simulator building to train the agency’s workers will cost less compared to renting a place for such purpose

According to Mohammed Bello-Koko, “We are begining to have high number of retiring staff in the NPA and this is creating a knowledge gap in the agency. We need to have our own training institute.

“So, I remembered we renovated our simulator building some years ago in NPA. To reduce cost, we need to have our own training using our own facility. We are almost 4000. If every year, we train a thousand workers in an hotel, it’s going to cost us a lot of money.

“So, we will be inviting you very soon to come and help us commission our simulator building for such training purposes. The simulator building can train almost 400 workers at a go. The facility has 34 bedrooms for users. It also has a kitchen and a canteen.

“We will soon be equiping it with a gym very soon because we want to make it a sustainable place for training of our staff.

“The idea is also to bring back our retired staff to come back and train our colleagues. Knowledge is specific and we have realised that our brilliant colleagues just leave without impacting knowledge. Even when they do, it is not enough.

“Rather than pay an external consultant to train our workers, we have decided to get in touch with some of our intelligent retirees to come back and help impact knowledge on our workers. This will save us huge cost that we would have spent hiring consultants to train our workers “