Airport Concession: Nigerian Government Agrees To Expand Scope Of Work – Union Leader
A week to the commencement of the total grounding of the aviation industry, the Ministry of Labour and Productivity has intervened in the brewing crisis between the industry unions and the Minister of State for Aviation, Senator Hadi Sirika.
A week to the commencement of the total grounding of the aviation industry, the Ministry of Labour and Productivity has intervened in the brewing crisis between the industry unions and the Minister of State for Aviation, Senator Hadi Sirika.
This is as our correspondent gathered that both parties have agreed to expand the scope of work by involving more union members in the two committees set up to usher in the concessioning exercise of the four airports in the first phase.
The airports slated for concessioning are Lagos, Port Harcourt, Abuja, and Kano.
Mr. Olayinka Abioye, the General Secretary of the National Union of Air Transport Employees (NUATE) confirmed to our correspondent that the Minister of Labour and Productivity, Dr. Chris Ngige had intervened in the impending crisis.
According to him, the meeting, which was held in Abuja today also had Sirika and heads of relevant agencies in attendance.
“We got a letter of invitation from the Dr. Ngige for a meeting in Abuja yesterday. What the Ministry of Labour did was to apprehend the 15 days ultimatum that we issued our minister and invited us for discussions. We had a very robust engagement at the meeting in Abuja and a lot of issues were raised,” he said.
“All the issues we raised in our letters were also discussed and the ministers affirmed there had been lack of adequate or inadequate information from one party to the other and that we were not given good representations in the two committees set up by the government.”
“In fact, we served only in one of the two committees, which the minister didn’t know. Moving forward, we have now agreed that the scope will have to be expanded and there should be more involvement of the unions in the whole processes and the concession model adopted is just by the minister and not yet the acceptance of the Transaction Advisers (TA).”
“The entire process will be driven by the TA and it is only when TA commences their jobs that all labour and legal issues and the model can be taken and will now be discussed.”
Earlier in a statement by Samuel Olowookere, Deputy Director Press, Ministry of Aviation, he said that the unions had agreed to withdraw the notice, following the intervention of Ministry of Labour and Productivity.
Olowookere hinted that the leaders of the unions, Air Transport Services Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (ATSSSAN), the Nigerian Union of Pensioners (NUP) and NUATE blamed their action on the lack of clear information of the reasons behind the federal government’s decision to concession the airports.
He declared that the meeting allayed fears that government’s objective would trigger job losses and compound the travails of the workers and retirees.
“The federal government negotiating team hence explained the good intentions of government, and all the steps taken so far, assured the unions of transparency and adequate representation in the exercise,” he added.
“They were further encouraged to participate actively in the two committees midwifing the concessioning, which are Project Steering Committee (PSC) and Project Delivery Team (PDT) as their membership was already guaranteed.”
He said that the unions subsequently expressed satisfaction at the development and agreed to convey same to their members with a view to withdrawing the ultimatum.
The unions had on October 11, 2017 threatened to embark on an indefinite strike against the plan of the government to concession major airports in the country.
The unions had issued a 15-day ultimatum, which would have elapsed Thursday next week.
