NIMASA assures of biometric ID cards commencement before end of January. 

The Head, Maritime Labour Services, NIMASA, Aliyu Lawal disclosed this to our correspondent after a closed door meeting with the leadership of the Maritime Workers’ Union of Nigeria (MWUN) yesterday at the union secretariat in Lagos.

Lawal assured that all facilities needed for commencement of the exercise were already on ground.

Recall that the union had clamoured for renewal of the biometric identity cards over the years.

Lawal said, “The biometric is going to commence by the end of this month. All the inputs concerning the biometric have been delivered. We have the machines and are ready to kick-start the process

“My assurance is that by the end of this month, we will have to start producing the ID cards. That is all I can say for now,” he submitted.

Earlier, he stated that part of his mission to the union secretariat was to seek continued peaceful coexistence between the agency and the union.

“I am here to do a new year visit to our esteemed maritime union, the PG and his team for peaceful coexistence with the agency in the past years and continue to ask them to maintain that peace and to discuss some burning issues as they relate to the union and the agency

“The meeting was fruitful for better and better engagement in discharge of our duties.

“The burning issues are more or less on the pool system which we have discussed and we are presenting that to our management and also the current happenings around the union.”

Responding, the President General of MWUN, Comrade Adewale Adeyanju advised that the union was not against online of biometric for Dockworkers but that the union must be carried along to avoid retired Dockworkers to register as part of the current workforce.

He stated that since the online will be accessible to everyone, there should be identification process to sieve out intruders into the system.

He however lauded the management of NIMASA for taking it upon itself to commence the process at this time.