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As with (nearly) all training in Nigeria, checks are done alternately in the sim and on the aircraft. The requirement is for annual sim, so checks are done on the aircraft every 6 months.
The President of Nigeria has sent the Director of Petroleum Resources on indefinite leave and has ordered an investigation into how a series of oil contracts were awarded last year. The big winners were the Chinese and Indians. Their record in other countries, such as DRC may make people wish that this were not so. Meanwhile, Angola has now overtaken Nigeria as Africa's largest oil producer. Whilst Nigeria will continue to try and blame all its woes on its 'colonial masters' despite having now been independent for 48 years, Angola has seemingly shrugged off its colonial woes, and a 30 year civil war which finished only just over 5 years ago, to overtake Nigeria in oil output. Angola has developed 19 of its 22 deepwater assets, whilst Nigeria has developed only 4 of 44. Nigeria continues to say that it has 'minor' community problems despite the Ijaw community pulling out of the current 'peace' talks and a number of deaths and serious injuries having happened last week. Its supposed war against corruption has also been thrown into disarray after the appointment of Farida Waziri as head of the EFCC, particularly since she has given the go-ahead for a number of former governor James Ibori's money laundering collaborators to return to Nigeria.
Despite BC of CHC announcing to a number of pilots that CHC has the S76 element of the Agbami contract whilst Bristow has the S92, Bristow says that no announcement has yet been made on the award of the contract. It seems NAPIMS are what is causing the hold up. Bristow's shiny new S76C++, the first one of that type here in Bristow (not Pan African) colors is still sitting on the ground in Lagos, but they continue sending pilots and engineers on S92 courses. If they don't sort out their local allowances problem fairly such that staff at Eket feel fairly compensated for staying in their sub-standard prison, they may have difficulty in actually crewing anything if they suddenly get awarded the Agbami contract. The pay review which is due to be announced next month will doubtless be another 3 - 5% on basic. leading even more people to look at returning to the Middle East, even with the problems in that part of the world. When will they realise that if there's nothing they can do to improve people's accommodation (though that's more a refusal to spend any money on improving facilities than anything else) the only way they can hold on to what they have and persuade more people to go there is by offering either more pay, or more time off, or both
A New Beginning
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