LASWA employs over 60 water guards to monitor  activities of ferry operators 

General Manager of the authority, Damilola Emmanuel, said this recently in a chat with migeriamaritime360 in his office.

The General Manager said the move was to enable the agency cover all the areas where water transportation is taking place in the state

He maintained that despite standing rules that boat operators should not travel at night,most of them flout  the directive, hence the need to deploy water guards to all areas to forestall such unruly acts.

According to him, it is the first of its kind to employ such high number of water guards since the 12 years of the establishment of the Authority.

His words, “Now in terms of night travels, we have our water guards and just this year for the first time in over about 12 or 13 years of the Authority, we are able to employ about 60 more water guards because there was a lot more places where water transportation runs and we didn’t have our presence but now through the employment of these water guards, we deployed them  to those locations where frequently, they were breaking the rules of night travels.

“So, it is easier for us to monitor, to know where this is happening and be able to take critical steps.”, he discosed.

Mr. Emmanuel added that the agency was carrying out an upgrade on its search and rescue unit as a means of complementing the security on waterways.

“Following up to that, as we are upgrading our search and rescue unit, the other units that are not search and rescue are enforcement units so that in those axis like Ojo, Badagry and Ikorodu where we always have issues because there is a calm in the Island.

“The two upgrades are taking place in Ikorodu and the Ojo axis.

“We are about to install CRM on our waterways for passengers to report what they see and we will begin to treat them on a day to day basis as opposed to having sporadic comments here and there”, the LASWA boss concluded.