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Ministerial auditors set NCAA workers on edge

Published

8 years ago

October 14, 2016

Ministerial auditors set NCAA workers on edge

Uneasy calm has now gripped workers of the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) as the staff auditors from the Ministry of Aviation visited and demanded for the staff list of the establishment for study.

A Similar visit was made at the FAAN last week resulting in sack of many management staff and others.

The exercise is believed to be part of the Federal Government approach aimed at pruning down work force in the parastatals earlier programmed for concessioning.

At the end of the exercise in FAAN, 10 directors and more than 4 other senior management staff were either retired or demoted.

Two of the FAAN directors were asked to refund one year salary, each, which they received after their services ended in 2014, but refused to leave service.

Also five others not sacked were downgraded from level 16 to 10.

But the fear of similar development repeating itself in NCAA has seen employees of various levels approaching the personnel department to ascertain their official status in the Authority before the Auditors’ activities.

It is learnt that of all the four parastatals under the ministry of Aviation, NCAA is the next in number of divisions and departments, recording 5 divisions and 20 departments.

An official denied that NCAA is over bloated; rather it has the assumed number of departments to have seamless supervision of the airlines, and local and international, opening in the country in line with the standard set by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICON).

Most part of Friday saw NCAA workers discussing in group with reference to the news that the ministerial auditors had beamed their searchlight on their outfit.

“Those, who are afraid are the unqualified members of staff, more than 80 percent of the workfare here (NCAA) is made up of highly technical personnel, so we are not going to suffer the same fate as is the case with FAAN,” a director said.

Also at the Accident Investigation Bureau (AIB), another arm of the sector, where crisis of confidence had been brewing in the past weeks over proper grading of staff, it is leant that the workers union there had intensified lobby on the management to finish the exercise before the visit of the staff auditors.

In a protest letter to the Ministry, the Association of Nigeria Aviation Professionals (ANAP) has called on the Minister to take steps to address what it called “looming industrial crisis.”

ANAP Secretary General, Comrade Abdulrasaq Saidu, in the letter copied to the Ministry of Transportation Permanent Secretary said there will likely be total industrial strike, if nothing was done to address the issues in contention before the end of October.

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