The Federal Government says the planned concession of major airports across the country will go on as planned. This is just as the government announced that a N45bn severance package would be given to ex-workers of the defunct Nigerian Airways.
The Minister of State for Aviation, Hadi Sirika, stated this while fielding questions from State House Correspondents after the Federal Executive Council meeting at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, on Wednesday.
He was reacting to the protests by members of the Air Transport Service Senior Staff Association and the National Union of Air Transport Employees who kicked against the planned concession. Sirika said the government could no longer sustain the funding of the 22 airports across the country and thus had to enter into concessions.
The minister said the Murtala Muhammed International Airport for instance was originally built to handle 200,000 travellers per annum but today it is serving eight million per annum, stressing that the government did not have the resources to upgrade the facilities to handle the increasing number of travellers.
While acknowledging the rights of the workers to protest, Sirika said the government would try its best to ensure that jobs were not lost.
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