Why FAAN employees oppose airports concession

Even if other stakeholders accept government planned concession of its airports, workers of the Federal Airport Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) have vowed to sustain their resistance of the move.

The federal government had at the weekend inaugurated the committee to fine tune the process allowing private sector take over at least four major airports in the country at Port Harcourt, Abuja, Kano and Lagos.

When successful, government is projecting to rake in not less than $100.45 billion, which is to be concluded by the second quarter of 2017, according to insider sources.

But the employees of FAAN have vowed to resist any move to have the major airports sold to individuals at the expence of their jobs and welfare.

According to them, there are still cases of retirees of the Authority, who are yet to be fully paid their gratuities and pension many years after their disengagement.

Federal government has hinged lack of resources to sustain the airports and meet international rating by ICAO as the major reason for the concession of the airports.

It carried out similar exercise in 2007 when a local wing of the Murtala Mohammed International Airport, Lagos, known as MMA2, was sold to a private firm, Bi-Courtney.

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The workers said they would fight against the concession to its logical end to avoid suffering the same fate as workers of the defunct Nigeria Airways.

Rising from what it termed crucial meeting, at the weekend, the FAAN branch of Air Transport Service Senior Staff Association (ATSSSAN) reeled out a number of issues that would make the proposed concession against the interest of the people and workers in particular.

They suggest that government should operate a public, private partnership (PPP) scheme whereby qualified investors would bring funds, technical team, and be prepared to work with skilled FAAN personnel, who have been trained with tax payers’ money.

In addition, the arrangement must be made as to carry workers’ union along on all agreement reached before committing such into signing.

They also asked that a definite decision should be taken on what will become of the FAAN pension liability, put at about N1.2 billion to avoid having workers disengaged by the concession programme stranded when the time comes.

By Emma Eke….

 

 

 

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