The Centre for Marine Surveyors in Nigeria has decried the infiltration of the profession by quacks over the years.
President of the association, Bambo Ademiliyu who raised the alarm at a public lecture held in Lagos at the weekend said that quackery has been the bane of the profession.
He also lamented that companies in Nigerians often prefer to deal with foreign surveyors rather than make use of the services of Nigerian indigenous surveyors.
“The foreign companies are coming here to take away the big money because we Nigerians don’t recognize the Nigerian professionals who are licensed to do the job,” he said
He said as part of effort to deal with the situation, corporate members of marine surveyors plan to come together to form a regulatory body which would be constituted by the association of marine engineers and surveyors; guild of marine surveyors and the centre for marine surveyors in order to regulate the practice and ensure that anybody not registered or certified by the body is not allowed to operate.
“We need to come together to have one voice for marine surveyors in Nigeria in order to drive away quackery. That is actually is the bane of marine survey in Nigeria and all over. If we can come together and have one voice to self regulate, we would be better put to get more business and bring in young men and women who want to be marine surveyors. If we don’t do that some of them will end up as quacks because they will go to the people who do not have proper certification for training.
“We are looking forward to legislation and we are working towards it so that we can have an institute for marine surveyors in Nigeria just like we have ICAN it will help a lot more and that way, we can have people say I am certified by the institute of marine surveyor and we can hold any person not certified responsible for any quackery. By the time we get to that levy quackery will disappear because if you don’t parade that certificate anybody using the person is doing so at his own risk,” he said
He also appealed to banks and financial institutions to engage the services of certified and licensed surveyors for pre-purchase survey of vessels so that they are not stuck with non-functional vessels when procured. This according to him is the reason why there are so many bad loans due to poor performance of these vessels after purchase.
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