The National Association of Aircraft Pilots and Engineers (NAAPE) has issued a 72 hours ultimatum to Caverton Helicopters to address the lingering workers welfare or risk shutdown.
The association accused the management of the helicopters of fundamental disregard to the well-being of pilots and engineers working in the organisation, reports Daily Independent.
Comrade Olayinka Abioye, the General Secretary of NAAPE in an interview with journalists yesterday in Lagos, condemned the alleged poor handling of labour and administrative issues pilots and engineers in Caverton Helicopters, regretting that none of the agreements reached between the organisation and NAAPE had been implemented years later.
According to Aboiye, most of the workers in the airline company had not been paid December salaries, while others are owed January and February salaries.
Abioye specifically said that an aspect of the agreement reached indicated that the dollar rate of their foreign exchange earnings would be at the prevailing rate as announced by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) but stated that N750 to a dollar was the benchmark used for the workers despite the continuous freefall of naira in recent months.
He explained that series of meetings had been held with the management of Caverton in the past to address the naughty areas without any success.
He said: “The position of our members and our union is that we want management to offset this payment in terms of that agreement by paying the current dollar rate and not the old rate.
“Why would management continue to owe staff salaries when these staff are working for them? The pilots and engineers are attached to Shell contracts, while shell is not operating, shell is paying management of Caverton Helicopters the salaries of all their workers. So, what is the difficulty by the management making available this money to our members?”
NAAPE further accused the management of the company of evading tax in the past five years, which he described as criminal.
He purported that taxes paid by NAAPE members, which were deducted from source had not been remitted in the last five years.
NAAPE also accused the management of not remitting the contributory pension scheme to the appropriate quarters despite the regular deductions, alleging that some of the Caverton Helicopters management had left the country with its members contributions.
Abioye explained that some of the workers who were declared redundant few years ago by the company were yet to be paid their entitlements.
To address all these, Abioye said the association had given the company three days ultimatum, which elapses on Wednesday.
He threatened that if by tomorrow its members were not paid fully their entitlements, NAAPE would shut down the Caverton company.
