Nigerian Flight Deck Travel and Business Reportage
THE last may not have been heard from all parties involved in the planned concession as there are indications that workers of the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) may resign en bloc over the insistence of government on the concessioning of four major airports in the country.
This is just as the unions are planning another protest over the concession as they allege that there are plans by the Minister of Aviation, Hadi Sirika, to concession the designated airports to his cronies.
A source, this morning in a phone call, told Nigerianflightdeck.com that some of the middle and top staff of FAAN who have put in over 10 years in service are considering resignation as their next line of action if the government went ahead with its planned concession of the airports.
She said that most of the staff were not comfortable with the current arrangement put forward by the government including parts of it which highlighted the training of FAAN staff to be absorbed and retained by the concessionaire, while the concessionaire it was learnt would only give the agency commissions based on whatever revenue it generated in a particular month.
According to the source, this was the same kind of idea that was put forward with the Maevis idea a few years ago where they (Maevis) were in charge of collecting our aeronautic and non-aeronautic revenues, which according to her, was not transparent.
Maevis was accused of allegedly swindling FAAN by collecting the bulk on finances and remitting to FAAN any amount of revenue it desired at the end of each month without scrutiny by a third-party, which stakeholders said negated the agreement it signed with the agency.
Maevis was eventually about three years ago forced out of the agreement by the industry unions in connivance with FAAN management. The case is still on going at the Appeal Court in Lagos.
The source stressed that some of the staff suspected the minister wanted to concession the airports to his cronies at a give a way price, stressing that the so-called training of staff by the concessionaire would not see the light of day.
She said, “There are lots of murmuring ongoing in FAAN at the moment over the plan to concession the four airports by the government. As I’m talking to you now, plans have reached an advanced stage to implement this plan of the government, but the staff of FAAN who are about 7,000 are not carried along.
“In fact, there is a lot of skepticism on the plan of the government. Sirika said the staff would be trained by the concessionaire, but that has never happened before. It was the same thing Maevis said they would do when they took over the all the revenue points of FAAN for over four years, but it never happened till they were pushed out.”
However, industry unions have perfected plans to stage a second protest against the impending concessioning of the airports.
A union source said the protest is would take place next week across all the airports in the country.
Recall that last Friday, the Minister of State for Aviation, Sen. Hadi Sirika inaugurated two committees, the Project Steering Committee and Project Delivering Committee, which he said would ensure smooth sailing of the government plans.
