TO say the least the on, off, on, off degrading of Hosea Kutako International Airport, from category 9 to 5 is a national disgrace, period!
There’s no doubt that downgrading of the airport from category 5 to a category 8 airport, not fit for the landing of bigger aircraft like airbuses, has not only caused the country embarrassment but the economic consequences thereof, in view of the pivotal role of airbuses in the ferrying of tourists into Namibia, could be far reaching.
Yet, somehow the country, and especially the leadership of this county, more so the line ministry, seems not to take the matter with the earnest that it deserves.
Because instead of realising the grave consequences of such a downgrading and call whoever may be responsible to account, and take the necessary bold steps, if only to administer the initial damage control, and eventually put the airport security system back on full alert, the response so far, even from the highest political echelons, have been, to say the least, lukewarm. There is no denying that the damage has already been done and it would be years before the Namibia Airports Company (NAC), Namibia, and especially the country’s tourism industry can recover from the shock it has been administered by the degradation.
To placate its own shortcoming and/or lack of oversight and mismanagement, the NAC seems to have been impulsively trigger-happy – firing, suspending and redeploying its staff right, left and centre. First to fall victim to the company’s seeming impulsive and trigger-happy scurrying to undo its own acts of omissions, were the firefighters.
Then followed the news early last week of the redeployment of the Air Traffic Chief.
If the redeployment of the Air Traffic Chief is anything to go by, then there seems to be more to the downgrading of the airport than meets the eye, especially in view of the fact that aging firefighting trucks have been explained as the main aspect of the downgrading. But what is ominous about this shifting, shuffling, pushing and shoving, is whether these staff members have not been made scapegoats for a bigger problem that is bigger than them?
The NAC has as yet to appraise the country fully as to what happened and what led to such a drastic step as the downgrading of Hosea Kutako.
One is made to understand that only two trucks or so which happened to be faulty at the time of the audit by the Directorate of Civil Aviation, led to the unfortunate downgrading of the national airport.
One is also made to believe that the company has already ordered dozens of trucks and the audit may have come inopportune and unexpected.
All too good but given the nature of the industry in which the company is operating, and the attendant high risks, and more so the importance of assuring and safeguarding the safety of passengers, the NAC cannot honestly expect the country, let alone travellers to appreciate that it has been, through whatever process, replacing the aging firefighting fleet.
Because certainly for a company of the NAC’s stature, and entrusted with such a sensitive task of maintaining the country’s national airport, and thus ensuring the all-important attendant safety of the airport, replacing the firefighting fleet should have been a systematic process based on depreciative accounting.
Simply this must have been an automatic process applying the law of depreciation accounting. But somehow this does not seem to have been the case, as indications by the company’s spokesperson are to the effect that some of the trucks may have overrun their usefulness. And this is the crux of the matter why the company would allow such seeming blatant negligence.
Blatant negligence in the sense that it did not need the audit of the directorate of aviation to realise that the fire trucks were either aging, and thus a risk.
And neither is the company by any means convincing that those who have been shown the door ultimately is where the buck necessarily stops.
Surely they are just the victims of gross negligence and lack of oversight by those much higher up in the echelons. But it remains to be seen whether those where the buck should actually stop, shall ultimately come to account. Not only this but the poor firefighters seem to have been summarily dismissed, and the public have as yet to be appraised and convinced of their misdemeanour.
Let alone about the due process of their dismissal. Guilty as charged seems to be the fate that has befallen them.
But the long and short of it is that somehow the red flags must have been flickering. And those who must have seen it either did not seem to, and worse if they did nothing seems to have been done about it until it was just too late.
It is also interesting to note that in this regard the industry seems all along to have been having at its beck and call experts of the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO). Which means that the process of monitoring standards at the airport must have been continuous. But from the latest downgrading saga it seems not. Not even to speak about the seeming lack, or neglect of the NAC’s own internal safety audit.
Certainly the matter needs a more serious approach than the country seems to be according it thus far!
Kae Matundu- Tjiparuro