The Lagos State Waterways Authority (LASWA) has collaborated with the Maritime Organization of West and Central Africa (MOWCA) and the Interferry Association to improve safety on the Lagos waterways.
LASWA General Manager, Mr. Damilola Emmanuel, made the statement on Monday when he hosted a delegation from MOWCA and Interferry on a facility tour of Lagos State waterways assets in Lagos, Southwest Nigeria.
Mr. Emmanuel, who also hosted members of the Transportation Correspondents Association of Nigeria (TCAN), explained that the facility tour is aimed at looking at the safety levels on the state’s inland waterways and exploring areas of improvement.
According to LASWA General Manager, “Ferry safety is very important to inland waterways operations. When MOWCA approached Lagos State to say, Look, we’re looking for where we want to host a ferry safety conference, and we think Lagos is a good place. Are you willing to partner with this? The Lagos State government said, Yes, we are ready to partner.
“As you know, we’ve enjoyed safety over the inland waterways in Lagos State. We want to continue to improve upon safety, knowing full well that we’re going to be doing this with international partners who can come in and share knowledge with us and tell us exactly how to improve our safety practices.
Interferry is an international safety body who promote ferry safety from Europe to America to Asia and to Africa. They’re a big ferry safety body, and they’ve been doing this all over the world.
“They have not been to West Africa before now and felt they needed to come down to also come and have a ferry safety conference over here.”
On the efforts LASWA has put in place to ensure safety on the inland waterways, Mr. Emmanuel stated that “first things first is the wearing of life jackets. We ensure that our water guards ensure that people wear their life jackets.
Secondly, we also introduce what we call a bi-annual inspection of boats every year.
Thirdly, we’ve introduced technology, which is the way the world is going now. You have to use technology to make things much smarter. So what we have done is been able to monitor in real time some of our jetties and even have communication with some boat operators as we go on the waterways.
“And of course, we have continued to talk about safety to the passengers, even organising training and workshops for the captains and the deckhands in partnership with companies like Yamaha, who have organised deckhand and captains training over time.
“Our Control Room has also been of help to our safety campaign. Data from our control room helps us make informed decisions always. And that’s very, very important because once you have data, you can make informed decisions.
“With data, we are able to now know that we have more people in certain areas using waterway transportation, and we need to ramp up safety in those areas and several others.”
Mr. Emmanuel reiterated the authority’s commitment to bringing electric boats under the Omi-Eko project, adding that the project would basically revolutionise water transportation in Lagos with the introduction of electric ferries, upgrading of the existing jetties and terminals, dredging of the inland waterways, and capacity building for LASWA.
He noted that the electric ferries would not phase out the current petrol boats but rather work side by side with the existing boats while encouraging the informal sector to go and form cooperatives so that it will be easy for the government to support them.
Also speaking, the Chief Executive Officer of Interferry, Mike Corrigan, explained that his company has come with 12 safety experts to help LASWA improve its safety operations.
According to Mr. Corrigan, ”I have a team here of about 12 experts in various safety matters, from navigation to safe operation of vessels to life-saving to all facets of safety.
“So what we want to do is to be able to tell LASWA what we’ve learned and offer our guidance and assistance.
“LASWA is now a member of Interferry. Interferry is a worldwide ferry trade association. We represent the ferry industry around the world with almost 300 members. We have a great opportunity to be able to share and learn on both sides.
“For now, Lagos is the only African city we have this with. However, we want to come into Africa more often to be able to help improve the waterways in Africa.
“We’ve had a couple of conferences now. This will be our third conference, and we hope to come back and offer our services to anybody who would like to participate with Interferry,” he concluded.