Former employees of the Skypower Aviation Handling Company Limited were not paid their severance benefits for a variety of reasons, according to the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE) (SAHCOL).
On November 18, 2018, the BPE reached a settlement with 982 former SAHCOL employees on the payment of N1.8 billion in severance benefits after the company’s new owners fired them. The company is currently named as Skyway Aviation Handling Company (SAHCO Plc).
The BPE had claimed failures in the required contribution to the Treasury Single Account (TSA) as the reason for the delay, but the former personnel had not received any money since that time.
The mandatory contribution to the TSA has been increased from a 25% revenue contribution in 2015 to 40% this month.
In a memo to the aggrieved staff dated October 11, 2022, BPE explained that letters have been written to the Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Zainab Ahmed, but no positive response has been received from the ministry.
The memo read: “In the light of the foregoing, it has become expedient to update you on our modest efforts to bridge the communication gap from the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) we signed with you on November 2, 2018, to the setting up of the Negotiating Committee and our Director-General‘s willingness to offer to pay the redundancy as opposed to the stand of the Chairman of SAHCOL. It is evident that if we had the resources, this would have been a forgone issue.
“Also recall that at the inception of this administration in 2015, all funds of government agencies and MDAs were swept into the Treasury Single Account (TSA), thus disabling us financially.
Given this scenario, our only option was to write to the Minister of Finance, Budget, and National Planning for funds to settle you, which we did via our memo on May 19, 2022.
“We have employed several persons to assist, our last being a visit to one of the Directors at the office of the Accountant-General of the Federation on Friday, July 7, 2022. We are not relenting and any support from your end would be highly appreciated.”
