News

Aviation Unions take legal action against aviation minister and FAAN over planned airport concession

Labour Unions in the Aviation Industry have taken legal action against the Minister of Aviation and the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria,FAAN, over the planned concession of airports.

The unions said they were being sidelined in the ongoing process and accused the aviation ministry of reneging on the agreement to iron out all labour issues. They further accused the ministry of trying to concluding the concession process without carrying them along.

The planned concession of the four major airports in the country is part of aviation development roadmap.
The idea behind the concession is to ensure better management of the airports, fast track their upgrade, enhance their operational efficiency and reposition them
to operate competitively.

The unions kicked against the idea from inception for fear of job loss.

“Is a way of inciting workers against the unions and let Nigerians know that there is something funny going in this place, how do the government think it would concession without resolving all the labour issues?”.

But after much assurances from the ministry of aviation and the Acting Director General, Infrastructure, Concession and Regulatory Commission, ICRC, Mr. Micheal Ohiani the unions agreed to be part of and educated on the process.

“What we want to do here is Concession and people should differentiate it from privatization”.

They insisted that if the concession must go ahead, all labour matters must be discussed and agreed on as stressed by the branch chairman of one of unions, Air Transport Services Senior Staff Association of Nigeria, ATSSSAN, Comrade Danjuma Ahmed.

“And labour issues have not been concluded, in fact they have not even started, as long as these labour issues are not addressed we are not going to agree”.

While the unions agreed to a roundtable to discuss labour matters, the Minister of Aviation Senator Hadi Sirika promised that there will be no job losses but job gain.

However, while the process is on course, the minister kept assuring that the project would be delivered before the tenure of this administration elapses.

“Concession programme is ongoing and certainly it will be achieved within our life time as a government”.

Unfortunately, the Secretary General, National Union of Air Transport Association, NUATE, Comrade Ocheme Aba said, the minister’s promise to deliver the project in few months time is strange to them when labour matters were yet to be settled.

According to him, for over two years while meetings were held with the unions on the process, labour matters were not given 100% attention.

He explained that currently certain decisions had been taken by the ministry without the knowledge of the unions on the concession process which had forced the unions to resort to legal action.
“Within the last few weeks, there is evident they are going ahead with the process of concluding the concession without taking our demands into consideration and so we needed to act”.

He expressed the belief that being a product of democracy, the government will play by the rules.
He warned that whoever is involved in the concession exercise should tread with caution.
Nosa Aituamen

Related Articles

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Back to top button