The House of Representatives has urged the President to immediately direct the Presidential Task force on COVlD-19 and Ministry of Aviation and its agencies to commence local Fights, beginning with the opening of at least one Airport in each of the six Geo-Political Zones to give all zones a sense of belonging and ensure equity and fairness.
It also urged the Federal Government to direct relevant agencies of the Ministry of Aviation to develop acceptable Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) that will be in tandem with the Nigerian Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) for the Airlines and Workers.
The House further directed Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) and Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) to ensure that airports and aircrafts are routinely disinfected promptly and mandated its Committee on Aviation, Legislative Compliance and Ad hoc Committee on COVlD-19 to monitor compliance and report back to the House within two weeks for further Legislative actions.
The House made these resolutions Tuesday at plenary while adopting a motion of urgent public matter on the need to reopen more airports closed in the wake of Covid-19, sponsored by Mohammed Monguno (APC, Borno) and 9 others.
The Lower Chamber’s decision is coming on the heels of the Federal Government announcement to reopen three airports, the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja, Murtala Mohammed International Airport, Lagos and the Port Harcourt International Airport on June 21.
Presenting the motion, Monguno said the House noted that Nigerian Government closed its airports to the international traffic on March 23rd and a week later all the local traffics were also stopped following the discovery of first index case of the COVlD-19 pandemic to curtail the spread of the virus.
He said the House also noted that the coronavirus pandemic has brought global air travel to an unprecedented halt as the United Nation’s World Tourism Organization (WTO) states that 100% of 217 countries worldwide have COVlD-19 related travel restrictions in place, such measures, the WTO says, represent the most severe restriction on international travel in history.
According to the Chief Whip, the House: “also notes that most countries in the world have maintained guided local flight for easy movement of people especially the essential workers and goods but banned international flights.
“Aware that the continued ban on local flights will further suffocate the economy and equally cripple the local air transport sector including several other ancillary businesses directly or indirectly linked to it and thereby escalate the unemployment situation in the country.
“Further aware that some of the airlines and other service providers within the industry immediately sent their staff on compulsory leave without pay and thus brought untold hardships to many homes directly or indirectly connected to the affected employees.
“Also aware that all the statutory agencies like the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria, (FAAN), Nigerian Airspace Management Agency, (NAMA), Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) the Nigerian College of Aviation Technology, (NCAT) Zaria, the Nigeria Meteorological Agency, (NIMET) and the Air Accident lnvestigation Bureau, (AlB) which generate their revenue when the aeroplanes are working are struggling to pay staff salary at the moment.
“Also concerned that most of the airplanes now lying idle at the various airports across the country will require huge sums of money in hard currency to service them if efforts are not made to put them back into operations thus losing more”.
