By Ejike Ejike, Abuja


The Nigerian College of Aviation Technology (NCAT) has partnered with the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) to training aviation workers on how to easily detect fake travel documents in various entry points.

The training, tagged ‘Control of the Authenticity and Validity of Travel Documents’, attracted participants from the Nigerian Immigration Services (NIS), Federal Airport Authority of Nigeria (FAAN), Nigerian Civil Avaition Authority (NCAA), NCAT and two participants from Ghana.

Speaking at the event in Abuja, the Deputy Rector of NCAT, Dauda Yahaya said the programme was organised following a request from ICAO and expressed confidence that the training will impact massively on participants.

According to him, “we had a request that came from ICAO that NCAT should host this training because it is a newly developed training. They feel we need to bring the knowledge and skills to people who handle our borders and in the airports particularly.”

Also, one of the instructors from the United Kingdom (UK), Mr Doug Scott explained that the training would go a long way in reducing illegal immigration and strengthen security in any country.

According to him, “From ICAO perspective, the training is to improve the facilitation of passengers through borders. The immigration officers will be able to check if the documents are genuine by authenticating and validating the documents of the passengers.

“It is just to ensure only genuine people can travel. The officers will have the capability to identify the document at the first point of the border, if they find there is issue with the document then the person is delayed and they may pass to another level of examination for further verification.”

Scott also explained that the increase in the number of travellers which has also resulted in the rise of forged travel documents also necessitated the training.

He said “the training impacts on the security of the airports because if a person is in possession of forged document you don’t know why the person has it.

“They may simply want to hide their immigration history, they may be planning to perpetrate a crime or terrorism; we don’t know, but the fact is that we must have their documents checked.”

cc:lalasticlala

http://leadership.ng/2017/10/23/ncat-icao-partner-airport-verification-training/