• Thursday, March 28, 2024
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Nigeria’s dredging industry needs regulation, skilled manpower – Essien

Nigeria dredging industry

Ubong Essien, a director of Julong Technology Limited, one of the world’s largest manufacturer of dredgers, said recently in Lagos that Nigeria’s dredging industry was in critical need of uniform regulations and skilled manpower to bring it at per with the rest of the world.  

Essien stated this at a one-day seminar with focus on the Nigerian dredging tagged, ‘The Nigerian Dredging Outlook 2020 & Beyond.’ 

According to him, the seminar was centred on sharing information about the dredging industry in Nigeria.

Essien, whose company is a high technological, environmental a d engineering enterprise that is based in Shandong Province of China, also focuses on providing one-stop-shop dredging solutions.

Julong Technology Ltd devotes to investing, consulting, designing, manufacturing, installation and operations as well as management of environment and protection engineering machinery.

Essien however stated that 30.8 percent of countries in the world have Julong dredging equipment. 

He further disclosed that Julong has entered into a joint venture with some indigenous companies to build water-crafts, and provide business opportunities in Nigeria’s dredging industry.

On the dredging outlook for 2020, Essien, who stated that the Lekki-Epe axis has the highest daily sales of sharp sand, said such was an indicative of the massive construction works going around the axis involving Dangote Group, seaport, airport and real estate.

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“Ikorodu will experience increase in sand demand with several land reclamation on going, while Badagry axis will witness the highest demand of LPO for contractors due to rail and road construction and consequent infrastructure development,” Essien said.

On his part, Edmond Chilaka, Dredge Skills and Marine Training Centre said the indigenous aspect of the Nigerian dredging industry lacks certificated workers. 

According to him, many of the workers in the sector are people who claim to have working experience with Westminster dredging, Julius Berger and others.

He stated that many of the workers do not have the former training to enable them understand the mechanics of dredging, the theories and concepts of dredging or even the themes of sand mining.

“So, you find out that they have a lot of skill gap in their understanding and practice on the job. Because of that, they cost a lot to dredging companies – because they make a lot of errors. Many dredgers have been ruined because of poor handling and incompetence,” said Chilaka.

According to him, Dredge Skills and Marine Training Centre wants to bridge the identified industry gap by providing the educational base for the dredgers. 

“Our trainees are going to spend at least a quarter of the training time onboard dredgers to give them proper dredging knowledge, which they will take back to their various companies. We should run the first course in Lagos within the next six month,” he added.