….distributes equipment to training centres
The Federal Ministry of Environment has expressed its commitment to the training and retraining of Nigerians to acquire the necessary skills in air-conditioning and refrigeration.
Dr. Iziaq Adekunle Salako, the Minister of State, Federal Ministry of Environment, made this known at the handing over ceremony of the refrigeration and air-conditioning servicing equipment and tools to beneficiary training centres in Lagos.
The exercise was carried out under the Hydrochlorofluorocarbons Phase-out Management Plan (HPMP) to support the country achieve the stage 2 target to completely eliminate the nation’s 2010 baseline consumption of 344.9 tonnes of the ozone depleting gas (HCFCs) by 2040.
Approved at the 81st Meeting of the Executive Committee of the Multilateral Fund , in June ,2018 in Montreal Canada, the project is being implemented by the Federal Ministry of Environment in collaboration with United Nations Development Programme UNDP) as the lead implementing agency; UNIDO as Co-implementing agency and Italy being the bilateral agency.
Salako said that he felt accomplished to supervise a critical leg of the HPMP project, which is the hand over of refrigeration & air-conditioning servicing equipment & tools to the first batch of HPMP certified training centres in Nigeria.
He said that the equipment and tools were procured under the HPMP being implemented by the Federal Ministry of Environment in collaboration with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the United Nations Industrial Development Organization ( UNIDO) and the Government of Italy.
“The endpoint of this project is to completely eliminate Nigeria’s 2010 baseline consumption of 344.9 tonnes of HCFCs by 2040,” Salako said.
He noted that over the years, the refrigeration & air-conditioning service sector in Nigeria has remained largely unstructured with a large presence of informal, small and medium scale practitioners with little or no presence of qualified engineers.
“The technical capacity of technicians in the sector therefore remained very low and inadequate to drive the total HCFCs phase-out plan of the country.
“To address this challenge, one of the major activities proposed by my ministry and approved for implementation under the HPMP stage 2 in 2018 is the establishment of Refrigeration & Air-conditioning Centres of Excellence by strengthening of existing training centres to provide up to date best practices in using non-ozone depleting and low global warming potential refrigerants as well as improving energy efficiency of cooling appliances.
“Consequently, in July 2023, 32 technicians were sent to Italy by Federal Ministry of Environment in collaboration with UNDP.
“These technicians received training and certification at an Italian company on using hydrocarbon refrigerants and improving energy efficiency in the servicing sector.
” The graduants will be operating training centres across the country and are expected to train and certify over the next few years not less 10,000 technicians on good refrigeration practices using hydrocarbon refrigerants.
“The Federal Ministry of Environment is currently updating the curriculum to be used for the training and certification programme.
“In addition, necessary policies and minimum standards to ensure that only trained and certified technicians are allowed to practice refrigeration & air-conditioning servicing in the country will soon be made public and will be strictly enforced, ” Salako said .
Some of the equipment handed over to the beneficiary training centres includes the following:
“Refrigeration handling tools such as service manifolds, electronic gauges and vacuum gauges,
"Tubing tools such as tube cutters and pinch off pliers. “Safety equipment including safety glasses and gloves
"Hydrocarbon service tools such as nitrogen flushing equipment, HC Leak detector and HC Charging equipment, etc.
"Equipment for recycling like portable recycling machines, external filter kits & burn outfilter accessories."The minister told the beneficiaries that the sustainable deployment of the equipment is of major priority.
“Hence we will be carrying out robust monitoring of your activities in partnership with a private sector company, the Standards Organization of Nigeria and your trade association, the Nigerian Association of Refrigeration & Air-conditioning Practitioners.
” It is my believe that with this handover, your centres will be better equipped to conduct the training, assessment and certification of technicians on the latest trends in the refrigeration & air conditioning sector.
I implore you to utilize the equipment effectively and abide by all the conditions outlined by the Ministry.
” This is an ongoing intervention and very soon additional training centres will be recruited into the programme,” Salaki said.
He expressed gratitude to UNDP, UNIDO and the government of Italy for their support and the successful implementation of the Nigeria HPMP project.
“I want to assure you that the huge investment that has gone into this programme will be jealously protected to ensure that the 2040 targets of Nigeria with respect to the Montreal Protocol is achieved,” Salako added.
In her goodwill message, the UNDP Resident Rep. Mrs Elsie Attafuah expressed excitement on behalf of the United Nations Development Programme UNDP and by extension the United Nations family in Nigeria to be part of the handing over ceremony.
Attafuah noted that the efforts of the development agencies facilitated the transfer of refrigeration, air conditioning training equipment and tools to two master training centers, under the hydrofluorocarbons phase out management plans and also commence the upgrading of 16 existing training centers nationwide.
She thanked the honourable minister for his commitment to seeing to the success of the project.
The Director Pollution Control and Environmental Health in the federal MInistry of Environment, Mr. Olubunmi Olusanya and the representative from UNIDO, Dr. Osu Otu said the timely delivery of the project spoke volume of the commitment of the federal government to the tackling climate change and related disasters.
In his goodwill message, the founder of Cool Plus Ltd, one of the training centres, Mr Ade Awujoola, said that the challenge before him was to give back to Nigeria, what the country has given to him.
Awujoola said that the climate crisis and the depletion of the ozone layer is an issue that concerned everybody, every human being.
According to him, the challenge over the years is our inability to raise a dynamic, smart and skilled workforce, to be able to help in addressing the climate crisis so that our environment can be more sustainable.
He expressed gratitude to the federal ministry of environment and the development partners in the training of the needed manpower to change the narrative of air-conditioning and refrigeration in Nigeria.
A representative of one of the beneficiary centres, Florence Aluko, of Government Technical College, Agidingbi, said that the training would equip technicians with the skills to use ozone friendly gas in the air- conditioning and refrigeration systems.
By Innocent Onoh (+2348034158834)
