The National Association of Aircraft Pilots and Engineers (NAAPE) has suspended the picketing of Bristow Helicopters pending the determination and outcome of the meeting at the instance of Federal Ministry of Labour at Ikoyi, Lagos on Thursday.
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NAAPE in a statement said the suspension of the picketing which had gone on from Monday to Wednesday was in view of the intervention of Hadi Sirika, minister of Aviation.
Passengers who booked to fly with Bristow Helicopters Monday to Wednesday were stranded across different states in the country as a result of the strike by NAAPE.
Francis Igwe, Public Relations Officer of NAAPE, had explained some of the grievances of the union to include Bristow’s proposal to suspend the Conditions of Service negotiations and their deliberate subversions of established terms of agreement with NAAPE, insistence on benchmarking salaries of national pilots and engineers to an obsolete rate of N345/$1 coupled with the recent insistence on their proposal to implement N355/$1, a rate which is not obtainable on any legs foreign exchange window in the world while still paying to expatriate foreigners their full remuneration in USD.
Others, Igwe said, include failure to train qualified persons in Airline Transport Pilot License (ATPL) and failure to fully reimburse individuals who have successfully completed their ATPL through self-sponsorship, disproportionate matching and capped reimbursement cash figures for self-sponsored pilots on ATPL with an employment bond of N30 million – an obvious unethical and sharp practice.
