Infrastructure Decay Hindering Maritime Sector growth – NPA

• Infrastructure Decay Hindering Maritime Sector growth

The Managing Director, Nigerian Ports Authority, Hadiza Usman, has said that the maritime and port activities in the sub-region are beset by many challenges, ranging from decay in infrastructure to low capacity utilisation, corruption, insecurity and other inefficiencies that impeded the growth of the sector.

Usman said this in a keynote address delivered at the opening session of the annual conference of Network for Professional Women in the Maritime and Port sector of West and Central Africa in Lagos.

She enjoined women in the sector to initiate actions that would change this situation for the better and to the benefit of the sub region.

She advised women professionals in the maritime sector to invest more in themselves in order to be indispensable in their field of endeavours.

“Women need to have more opportunities in the sector given that only two per cent of the world’s maritime workforce is made up of women, according to a 2015 research by the International Transport Workers Federation,” a statement quoted her as saying.

She called on delegates to fashion out ways in which women could collectively contribute to the needed change in the maritime sector and the nation in general.

In their goodwill messages, the General Coordinator of Professional Women in Ports and Maritime Sector, Madam Adanlete Lawson, and the Secretary General, PMAWCA, Mr. Michael Lueguje, commended the NPA MD for her achievements thus far and for the support she had given to the PMAWCA over the years.

“The Network of Professional Women in Ports and Maritime sector is an affiliate of Port Management Association of West and Central Africa,” the statement said in part” adding that the four-day conference would feature discussions on successes and challenges of port concession, change leadership and management, among others.