15th April, 2018
The International Air Transport Association (IATA) has commended the Nigerian Airspace Management Agency (NAMA) for its consistency in the rendition of qualitative bills in the last three years.
A statement signed by NAMA’s spokesperson, Mr Khalid Emele, in Lagos on Sunday said the apex aviation body made commendation the during the IATA/NAMA Service Review Meeting which held at the IATA corporate office in Geneva Switzerland.
IATA Director of Airline Settlement Services, Mr Manfred Blondeel, said the feat had ensured that the error rate in bills posted by the agency for its services to airlines had reduced to less than two percent from over 30 percent nine years ago.
“NAMA has carved a niche for itself as the best out of 75 authorities and over 4,000 airlines we deal with globally in terms of reduced error rate and disputes in bills posted by the agency to us.
“Considering the myriad of disputes that we notice daily from errors by some authorities, some errors even exceeding 50 percent, it is to our delight that the dispute/error rate of NAMA billing has consistently remained the lowest in the world with over 98 percent accuracy.”
The Managing Director of NAMA, Capt. Fola Akinkuotu noted that the progress so far made in the accuracy of airline billing was a fallout of reforms being embarked upon by the agency.
He said the reforms were geared toward ensuring transparency, accountability and efficiency in service delivery, part of which involves automating its business transactions.
“For instance, we have automated rendition of billings at the international airports in the country where traffic is huge, while we are also looking at doing same at other airports across the country,” Akinkuotu said.
While appreciating members of the commercial department of the agency for their dedication to duty, the NAMA boss pledged to support the department in its quest to achieve service excellence.
On her part, the general manager of the department, Mrs Joy Umeh, recalled that IATA had visited NAMA a couple of years back and had expressed dissatisfaction over its quality of bills.
Umeh said that visit by IATA team acted as a catalyst for the department to devise more aggressive ways towards perfecting the agency’s billing system.