Emirates airlines not involved in discriminatory recruitment —Mgt

Nigerians seeking a career in aviation will be thrilled to hear that Emirates, the world’s largest international airline, is actively in search of talented people with a passion for service to join its award-winning team of cabin crew.

This has contradicted the discriminatory recruitment allegations levelled against the airline and other foreign carriers operating in the country by Nigeria’s House of Representatives Committee on Aviation.

The lawmakers had last week expressed their displeasure at what they called the refusal of foreign airlines to engage Nigerians as part of their technical and cabin crew.

The aviation committee, while seeking to correct the injustice so that young Nigerian professionals could be employed by the foreign carriers, had vowed to audit the activities of the foreign carriers to ascertain the number of Nigerians they employed as part of their cabin crew and technical crew including pilots and engineers.

However, investigations carried out by the Nigerian Tribune has shown that Emirates airlines in particular did not fall into the category of the guilty airlines as the airline’s recruiters are presently busy meeting and hiring candidates from different countries around the world including Nigeria, until the end of June.

This is as indications emerged that the airline presently has in its employ more than 130 Nigerian nationals.

Sources close to the UAE airline disclosed to the Nigerian Tribune that the carrier, in its search for cabin crew in the next six weeks around the world, has invited qualified Nigerians to apply for the positions.

Defending the accommodative attitude of Emirates, one of the sources said the “airline’s global cabin crew team is made up of a diversity of 160 nationalities, reflecting its love for cultural mix and its recruitment system cutting across more than 170 countries around the world.

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“As air travel returns with a vengeance, the airline’s recruiters are busy meeting and hiring candidates from different countries around the world including Nigeria, now until the end of June.”

In line with this, the Emirates Group’s Executive Vice President for Human Resources, Abdulaziz Al Ali said, “There’s no more exciting airline than Emirates for anyone interested in a flying career, and we’ve received tremendous interest since we began our recruitment drive for cabin crew in November. While parts of the application process are done online, we always make the effort to meet our candidates in person whenever we can.”

While inviting interested and qualified young Nigerians to seize the opportunity to apply before the end of June, the airline however, said it would only accommodate those who are fluent in written and spoken English and ready to live in Dubai, the headquarters of the airline.

The chairman of the aviation committee, Honourable Nnolim Nnaji, while emphasising how Nigeria had been over generous to the airlines with unrestricted access to the Nigeria travel market, urged the foreign carriers to reciprocate by engaging indigenous pilots, engineers and licensed cabin crew into their technical staff.

“Most of the foreign airlines are granted multiple entry points into the country so as representatives of the people, we will be interested in knowing how such gestures reflect in our economy and labour force. It is equally important that we know the percentage of their tickets that are sold by our local agents so that we ensure that what obtains in other climes are same here.”