The Minister of Aviation, Sen. Hadi Sirika, has described automation processes as an indispensable tool that must be deployed to boost Nigeria’s Aviation sector.
He made this assertion during the ninth edition of Aviation Workers’ Week and Awards, themed “The gains of an automated personnel management system in the aviation sector” organised by the Joint Consultative and Negotiating Council (JCNC) of the Federal Ministry of Aviation today (March 3) in Abuja.
Represented by his chief of staff, Engr. Kayode Sunday, Sirika commended the JCNC, an amalgam of four existing unions, for choosing the theme, expressing the hope that the outcome of the congress will boost the aviation sector.
In his remarks, the ministry’s permanent secretary, Mr. Abel Enitan, re-echoed the minister’s assertion, saying automation process by every standard has become the norm in the contemporary world of business and governance.
“In consideration of the critical roles the aviation industry plays in the nation’s economy vis-à-vis the nation’s gross domestic product (GDP), adopting the automation culture in our daily lives has become indispensable. I would like to reiterate further that the relevance of the theme for discussion by the team of professionals is most likely to change the perception of our workers and speedily embrace the automation system in our various workplaces,” he said.
Represented by his special adviser, Mr. David Awotunde, Enitan said that the government’s recent stance on the need for a paperless work system and the launching of the National Digital Economy Policy and Strategy, all lend credence to the seriousness attached to issues of computerisation, digitalisation and automation.
According to him, the ministry, in conjunction with the unions has taken the initiative to engage and sensitise all stakeholders in the six geopolitical zones on this paradigm shift, adding the results, responses and reactions received from participants were quite overwhelming.
Earlier in his welcome remarks, the JCNC chairman, Comrade Hector Nnadi, said the unions have realized, over time, the countless potentials of the automation system in driving the various sectors of any nation’s economy.
He said this trend has been ongoing for some decades with countries moving further to other areas of digitisation, stressing the quantum leap as experience in most advanced countries of the world through the adoption of automation as visible testimony.
“The recent adoption of a national policy on the subject and government’s emphasis and plans on a change in our work culture underscores the future of government and private businesses,” he added.
Nnadi revealed that the unions have resolved to push through the automation culture through a series of activities which it hopes will lead to total adoption of this concept to attain the status of global citizens.
In his goodwill message, the president, National Association of Aircraft Pilots and Engineers (NAAPE), Comrade Abednego Galadima, described the theme of the event as apt, considering that COVID-19 has changed the world’s landscape where automation has become the new normal.
He added that it is also instructive that automation is one of the emerging areas where unions and management will have to agree on several things.
