Aero Contractors, a domestic airline, has disclosed that it will cost the airline N1.9 billion to pay redundant staff as it promised to employ more staff as it fleet gradually increases.
Ado Sanusi, managing director of Aero Contractors, told BusinessDay Sunday that redundant staff who have been employed elsewhere want their money paid immediately because they were aware the airline had a plan to call back more staff soon, adding that failure to accept the job offer then, Aero would no longer pay them severance packages but resignation packages.
“Redundancy started in March. It will cost us N1.9billion to pay redundancy fee. I cannot afford that. We can go to court and I will tell the judge that I do not have the money and when I have the money I will pay. We believe we can be putting N10 to N15 million every month to pay redundancy fee.
“Not all of them will be on redundancy by next year when we will have about six airplanes flying and they know we will call people back. We will have a total of eight aircraft before the end of first quarter next year,” Sanusi said.
This reaction is coming at a time when some affected workers have complained that the airline has refused to pay them their severance packages as promised.
It would be recalled that eight months after the takeover of management of Aero Contractors by the Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria (AMCON), the management sacked about 70 percent workforce over redundancy claim.
The airline managing director further disclosed that when AMCON took over Aero Contractors in February, it had over 1300 staff and they had only one aircraft flying, as one aircraft cannot pay salaries of 1300 staff, since the required standard across the world is 30 to 50 staff to an aircraft.
“We saw that the only way we can revive Aero is to start the C-checks and to reduce the number of staff. In doing this, we didn’t say we are going to sack them but to put them on redundancy. This means, when we are back on our feet, we can call them back. During this period, you can go look for a job.
“Everyone went on redundancy and the union were called to choose about 300 staff to come back. 3oo staff came back, so we started doing some checks with the aircraft and we brought three aircraft back. We brought 200 staff back, making 500 staff. When we started doing C-check, we decided to call another 150 staff on contract, remaining about 650 staff outside,” he said.
However, a source close to the airline, however, told BusinessDay that the Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria (AMCON), which took over the running of the airline since2011, has reabsorbed some of its technical staff, following the approval given to it recently by the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) to carry out C-Check on series of Boeing 737 aircraft. Those reabsorbed were less than 5 percent of the sacked workers.
One of the affected workers who didn’t want his name in print decried that contrary to the promise of the management to pay the affected staff their severance packages few months after the redundancy claim, most of them were yet to be paid their entitlements.
The affected worker also said that the fleet of the airline has further depleted to just two aircraft; Dash 800 aircraft.
Another source said that a few of the affected workers were paid just two months salaries of the seven months owed them by the airline before the redundancy claim in March.
