THERE are indications that the Nigerian airspace may be shut Friday as the industry unions threatened to protest alleged inability of the Nigerian Airspace Management Agency (NAMA) to implement approved new salary structure.
The unions, Air Transport Services Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (ATSSSAN), National Union of Air Transport Employees (NUATE) and the National Association of Aircraft Pilots and Engineers (NAAPE), called for implementation of the new salary structure within 72 hours or its members embark on a warning strike to force the management to comply.
Meanwhile, airline operators, under the aegis of Airline Operators of Nigeria (AON), have called on the Minister of Aviation, Stella Oduah-Ogiewonyi, to nip in the bud the impending crisis, which they said, could cripple the aviation sector.
The Assistant Secretary General of AON, Mohammed Tukur, noted that the NAMA management should urgently enter into negotiation with the workers to avoid a shut down of the airspace.
Most of the workers are air traffic controllers, air traffic engineers and others, that offer critical services to flight operations.
The unions, in a joint statement signed by Olayinka Abioye for ATSSSAN, Abdulkareem Motajo for NUATE and Abah Ocheme for NAAPE, said that there is no going back on the planned strike.
The unions said the strike would force the management of NAMA to act fast in implementing the adjusted salary structure for its workers that was signed by the Salaries and Wages Commission in August 13, 2012.
The statement reads in part: "NAMA management has been given 72 hours to meet the demand of the workers. Failure to do so will lead to the shutting down of the Nigerian airspace throughout Friday. We are bent on embarking on the one-day strike to press home our demands.
"During the period, no aircraft will be seen flying in the Nigeria airspace as our members will retrieve their services to airlines across the country and if that does not yield the expected result, we will embark on indefinite strike."
President of ATSSSAN, Benjamin Okewu, said the same approval was made and fully implemented in the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority of Nigeria (NCAA) and the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN
and even the Accident Investigation Bureau (AIB) and wondered why NAMA management is finding it difficult to implement it in the agency.
He said: "We just had a congress to renew our mandate concerning the implementation of the adjusted salary structure as approved by the Salaries and Wages Commission. We negotiated and then the law requires us to present those things with government agencies that are responsible for those approvals and we have done that. We got approval for NCAA, FAAN, NIMET and AIB and all those agencies have implemented their own, NAMA's own was delayed and eventually approved in August last year and then, it was sent to the ministry and delayed there for so many months again and eventually the ministry released it in December after a lot of pressure.
"As we speak, we are in February 2013 and it is yet to be implemented. We have written several letters to the management about the implementation and they feel adamant about it. We have just come here to renew the mandate and by the mandate today, if three days after today, management has not done anything to show us that they are ready to implement these conditions of service, we are going to proceed on a day warning strike."
The Guardian