The Federal Government has given airline operators one week to agree realistic repayment plans for outstanding Ticket Sales Charges owed to aviation agencies, as part of measures aimed at resolving the disputes that triggered industrial action in the sector earlier this week.
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Minister of Aviation and Aerospace Development, Festus Keyamo, SAN, issued the directive following an emergency meeting on Thursday with airline operators, aviation unions and heads of aviation agencies.
The meeting was convened after earlier engagements with the Aviation Sector Unions and the Airline Operators of Nigeria following the temporary suspension of industrial action embarked upon by the unions on Tuesday, August 11.
According to a statement by the ministry’s Permanent Secretary, Mahmud Adam Kambari, the meeting was aimed at fostering greater understanding, cooperation and stability within the Nigerian aviation industry.
Under the resolutions reached, the Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority and other heads of aviation agencies are to obtain schedules of outstanding payments from individual airlines and work out repayment arrangements spread over a reasonable period.
The government said the repayment plans must take into consideration the airlines’ operating costs and prevailing economic realities.
Directors of Finance and Accounts in the various aviation agencies were consequently directed to meet individually with the airlines and agree on realistic repayment schedules within one week.
“The Directors Finance and Accounts in all Aviation Agencies are to meet individual Airlines to agree on realistic repayment plan within one week,” the resolution stated.
Beyond the dispute over Ticket Sales Charges, the meeting also addressed the contentious issue of workers’ freedom to join trade unions.
Keyamo affirmed that the decision on whether to belong to a union rests with individual workers and should not be made on their behalf by airline management.
The NCAA was therefore directed to immediately ensure that aviation unions are granted direct access to employees of all airlines, solely for the purpose of distributing membership forms through which workers can independently indicate whether they wish to unionise.
The government warned that any airline preventing such direct engagement between unions and its employees would face sanctions from the NCAA.
The resolution effectively seeks to balance the freedom of workers to choose whether to join a union with the need to prevent management or unions from making that decision for them.
The parties also agreed to reconvene after one month to assess implementation of the resolutions and review the state of industrial relations in the sector.
Kambari said the decisions represented the collective resolutions of all the parties involved in Thursday’s meeting.
The intervention followed Tuesday’s industrial action by aviation unions over disputes concerning alleged non-remittance of the statutory five per cent Ticket Sales Charge and concerns over workers’ freedom of association.
The National Union of Air Transport Employees had alleged that domestic airlines owed aviation agencies more than ₦25 billion in outstanding TSC payments, with Air Peace allegedly accounting for more than ₦17 billion of the amount.
NUATE President Ben Nnabue also said the unions were demanding that aviation workers be allowed to exercise their freedom of association in accordance with Nigerian labour laws and applicable international labour standards.
The President of the Air Transport Services Senior Staff Association of Nigeria, John Ogbe, similarly raised concerns about alleged casualisation of workers and the absence of collective bargaining agreements among some airline operators.
The unions said they initially avoided shutting down the operations of every domestic airline because of the likely effect on passengers, but subsequently targeted Air Peace, citing the scale of its alleged outstanding TSC obligations and what they described as its unwillingness to engage on labour issues.
The industrial action affected Air Peace operations at the General Aviation Terminal, popularly known as MMA1, in Lagos, as well as Abuja airport.
At MMA1, passengers were stranded for several hours after access to parts of the terminal was disrupted. The arrival section subsequently reopened at about 2:25 p.m., allowing passengers to enter the terminal as flight operations gradually resumed.
Air Peace later announced through the terminal’s public address system that some afternoon flights would operate, although some morning services had already been cancelled.
The Ticket Sales Charge at the centre of the dispute is a statutory five per cent charge collected by airlines on tickets for flights originating in Nigeria on behalf of aviation agencies.
Under the existing revenue-sharing arrangement, the NCAA receives 56 per cent of the TSC revenue, the Nigerian Airspace Management Agency receives 22 per cent, the Nigerian Meteorological Agency gets nine per cent, the Nigerian College of Aviation Technology receives seven per cent, while the Nigerian Safety Investigation Bureau receives six per cent.
The NCAA has maintained that the Ticket Sales Charge is central to the financing of its regulatory activities, accounting for about 85 per cent of its revenue and supporting functions including safety oversight, certification, licensing and inspections.
With Thursday’s resolutions, the Federal Government is seeking to address both major issues behind the recent confrontation — outstanding TSC obligations and workers’ freedom to choose whether to unionise — while preventing another round of disruption to airline operations.
The immediate focus will now be on the meetings between aviation agencies and individual airlines, which are expected to produce agreed repayment plans within one week, while the NCAA is also expected to enforce the directive granting unions direct access to airline workers for voluntary membership decisions.
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