The National Association of Air Traffic Engineers (NAAE) has joined other trade unions in the aviation industry to call for the reversal of the 50 per cent deductions of government parastatals revenue generated, especially by the Nigerian Airspace Management Agency (NAMA) in order not to impede on safety.
Speaking in an interview, the President of NAAE, Engr. Selzing Miri, noted that the deduction was not in the interest of the agency as it has affected the recurrent trainings of professionals in NAMA.
Miri expressed dismay over the lack of recurrent trainings of agency’s personnel as a result of paucity of funds arising from revenue generation deduction.
He said: “If you look at the infrastructure in the airport, particularly the facilities that we the engineers are maintaining, we have a lot of pressure in doing our work for the lack of basic facilities such as dedicated operational vehicles.
“We don’t have good operational vehicles in most of our airports and a lot of other facilities in some stations are not even available.
“All we are saying is there’s no point for any form of deduction from the revenue generated by our agencies.
“Our agencies are not profit-making as is well known to everybody. We are just cost recovery and all the revenues that are being generated is to enable the agency pay for the staff salary and then be able to procure the necessary facilities or upgrades, the ones that needed to be upgraded.
“It’s just for the running of the agencies and we are not profit-making so it is needless to say you take anything from the little income that the agency is making. So I think our best is the deduction should be stopped completely.”
Miri enjoined all members of NAAE nationwide to remain law abiding and to participate in the aviation unions peaceful protest should government fail to address the issue before the planned exercise.
He regretted that government was not giving NAMA subventions, instead of encouraging the agency, the government was adding burdens to it.
The NAAE boss, who painted a gloomy picture warned, that it will be very hard to pay salaries if the issue of deduction was not addressed
“And then the report we always get is the fact that the funds are not available and if government are doing this much, taking this much from our revenue, it’s a pointer that shortly or later we will discover that even the agencies in the aviation industry will not be able to pay salary.”