By SHEILA LASIBORI
AVIATION workers will today ask the Civil Aviation Authority to carry out a “mass retrenchment” exercise that would to be completed by year end.
This means CAA must pay entitlements which include leave and retrenchment payments (ex-gratia) to its members since the agency had shifted from a Government department to an entity generating its own revenue.
The National Capital District-based members of CAA’s Air Traffic Controllers (ATC) association, Civil Aviation air navigation association and rescue fire fighting (RFF) association met yesterday in Port Moresby with the management led by director Joseph Kintau.
Association executives including ATC president John Paul and operations president Jonathan Sogai will meet with Mr Kintau and his group today to press for the union’s stand taken yesterday.
During yesterday’s meeting, members were especially concerned that they may not be paid their retrenchment entitlements (ex-gratia) as plans were in place for Air Traffic Service to be separated from CAA to become a company of its own next year.
Members also claimed the CAA did not have a structure through which it could conduct redundancy exercises, adding that since no structure was in place, the future for retrenchment payouts was dim.
“We are demanding total payout so we could start fresh with CAA,” president of technical services Jonathan Sogai said.
He added the payment being demanded was under the former public service structure when CAA was still a Government department.
But Mr Kintau blamed the delay in payments of accrued entitlements and retrenchment payouts on the “unavailability of records”, especially of personnel’s employment starting dates, which he claimed made it impossible for proper calculations and payments to be determined accordingly.
Mr Kintau also said he proposed for an ombudsman to deal with cases that were not handled properly by the management, especially issues affecting personnel.
He urged the personnel with grievances to see the management individually.
Mr Kintau tried to assure the staff that instead of waiting upon the National Government to allocate funding for their entitlements CAA management will begin paying by next Friday.
With this, about 100 personnel would be paid weekly, he said. He said CAA management had some money to cover the payment.