‘Airport Concessioning: Settle Aviation Workers’ Entitlements’

The Association of Nigeria Aviation Professional (ANAP), on Thursday, said that aviation workers are apprehensive over losing their jobs to airport concessioning.

LEADERSHIP reports that the federal government has said that the concession of the country’s airports remains the best alternative to allow for investment in critical infrastructure in the industry.

However, speaking to newsmen, the secretary general of ANAP, AbdulRazaq Seidu, who warned that failure to address aviation workers gratuity, entitlement and pension in full details before any form of concession will spell disaster for the country and the aviation industry said majority of the staff especially those from the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN), has shown apathy to work.

Seidu, however, advised the Minister of Aviation and Aerospace Development, Festus Keyamo (SAN) to be wary of persons currently urging him to go ahead with the concessioning of the airports without reaching agreements with the workers whom he said with be negatively affected.

The ANAP scribe said, “we must understand that issues surrounding the concession of our airports has been going on for a long time now, it has been tabled at the House of Representative and the floor of the Senate and we told them at different time that concessioning the country’s airports is not in the interest of the country, it is a security risk, it will expose the country to external aggression.”

He said, “the process must be transparent, that was the war we fought with the former minister, Hadi Sirika who was following the due process until the last stage when the issue of Ethiopia airline came up”

Keyamo must not deviate from the right course; he shouldn’t make the mistake Sirika made by setting up a lot of things that have no bearing on the issues at hand.”

According to Seidu, “the minister is a legal luminary and he should follow the due process, we are not against the concessioning of the airports but due processes must be followed and among the due process is that all the labour matters must be discussed and agreed upon, you can’t run away from that.”

According to him, the union must be carried along at every stage of the discussion as he said, “The minister should know because he was a minister of state for Labour that the Secretariat of the unions are the backbone of the unions and not the political heads.

“Secretariats are the pivots of the unions. You cannot tell us that it will get to a stage in the course of the discussions before they can involve the unions otherwise it will not see the light of the day. It will collapse just as the Sirika system collapsed. The unions must be carried along from the beginning.”

Speaking further, he queried the absence of a board of directors for the agencies saying “Why have we not put a governing board of directors in those parastatals? None of the agencies has an approved updated condition of service for its workers.

The committee he is going to set up must be a FAAN union dominated committee, not unions from NCAA or from NAMA because they are not directly affected by the concession and they are not protecting the interest of FAAN workers. Unionism is about the interest of your people. The numerical strength of FAAN workers and the retirees is quite huge.”

“The workers’ gratuity, entitlement and pension of workers must be discussed in full detail before any concession is carried out. How can you say categorically that a concession will not sack workers?

“I strongly appeal to the minister to beware of sycophants advising him, he must clash with aviation workers on this matter. He has been doing wonderfully and I hope he finishes well and writes his name in gold.”