The Federal Government on Wednesday said it would no longer condone incessant industrial actions by aviation workers around the airports despite the important roles they are playing in the industry.
To curb the strikes by the workers, the government vowed to begin to enforce the Civil Aviation Act (2022) section, disallowing employees from embarking on flight-crippling strikes.
The Minister of Aviation, Sen. Hadi Sirika, made this disclosure during his interaction with State House correspondents at the Council Chambers after the Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting in Abuja.
The minister tendered the government’s unreserved apology to air travellers over the industrial actions by the National Union of Air Transport Employees (NUATE); the Air Transport Services Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (ATSSSAN), and Nigerian Aviation Handling Company (NAHCO) Plc, which crippled flight operations on Monday.
Sirika, who described the industrial action as wrong and against the law, promised that the government would begin to enforce the relevant sections of the Civil Aviation Act 2022, which prohibits industrial action and riots of such magnitude in the aviation sector, to prevent future disruptions of operations in the industry.
He clarified: “This is very important to the travelling public. First, we apologize to our teeming passengers in this difficult moment. There are other ways of channelling issues when they arise but they are not permitted to go on strike because aviation is an essential service.
“Second, this will not happen in the future by the grace of God. And the reason is simple; aviation is an essential service. The Act has been assented to by Mr President, so strikes and riots around our airports are prohibited by the laws of the land.
“Now that we have the Act in place and assented to by Mr President and passed by the National Assembly, we will deal with it according to the law”, the minister added.
Describing aviation as an essential service and that the striking workers had other less-disruptive avenues to voice their grievances, Sirika maintained that henceforth government would ensure that no essential service is being disrupted by anybody no matter how aggrieved as there are other channels the workers can explore to channelling their grievances to their employers and government whenever the need arises.
He expatiated: “They are not permitted to go on strike because aviation is an essential service and is the law of the land now.
“I will give you an example. There was an airline that had to return to base because it couldn’t land. Imagine if there was a patient on that aircraft. Imagine somebody attending to a severe issue or matter at hand or business or a student trying to catch up with an exam and then because of somebody who is aggrieved some other person will die.
“Government will no longer allow that. So it’s in the law of the land, check the Civil Aviation Act, it’s been assented to and it’s going to take place soon, in fact now, from today we will not allow that.
“As a government, our ears are always open, the government is open to listening to any grievances and there are procedures for dealing with this kind of grievances. They should please desist from this. It is wrong. It is inhumane. It is not allowed. It is not permitted and we will not be permitted any longer”, the minister stressed.
It would be recalled that due to the aviation workers industrial action on Monday over what they termed “poor wages”, air passengers were stranded across major Nigerian airports early in the day.
