Foreign carriers operating in Nigeria are unable to repatriate proceeds from the sales of tickets in the last few months due to Foreign Exchange scarcity.
It was gathered that the carriers, numbering 25, have over $100m as tickets sales proceeds stuck in the country because they could not access foreign exchange from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to enable them return the monies to their respective head offices.
The foreign carriers namely British Airways, Emirates, Lufthanza, Iberia, Delta Airlines, among others, account for over 70 per cent of ticket sales in the Nigerian market.
Some airlines are threatening to reduce the number of flights into the country as a result of this.
To this end, the National Union of Air Transport Employees (NUATE) has called on government to soften forex restriction for these airlines in order to protect Nigerians working with them from losing their jobs.
The union alleged that there are plans by foreign airlines operating into the country to sack over 2,000 Nigerian employees in order to cut costs and shrink operations.
A protest letter by NUATE to the Minister of Transportation, Rotimi Amaechi and Minister of State for Aviation, Senator Hadi Sirika, entitled, “Save Our Souls and Jobs of over Two Thousand Workers”, explained that the reason for the sack is that foreign airlines have their earnings locked in Nigeria.
The union in the letter signed by NUATE’s Acting General Secretary, Olayinka Abioye, said the development had greatly hindered the airlines’ abilities to transfer their earnings to their respective home countries to meet operational costs.
It urged the Federal Government to intervene and grant the foreign airlines concession to repatriate their proceeds to their home countries.
