The fund has been domiciled with the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) in the past two years with many of the former workers confronted with hardship while over one thousand had died without getting their entitlements.
According to the President of the National Union of Air Transport Employees (NUATE), Comrade Muhammed Safiyanu, the union would, in the next few days, officially write the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) to intervene in the matter and ensure that the final benefits was paid to the workers.
Safiyanu hinted that an inter-ministerial committee set up by the government to come out with the actual amount of money to be paid the workers, had come up with the N78 billion to over 6,000 staff of the liquidated carrier.
The committee, he added, also recommended one per cent administrative charges, totalling N735 million to any government agency that would disburse the funds to the ex-workers.
He, however, regretted that a department under the Ministry of Finance, Presidential Initiative on Continuous Audit (PICA), which the present administration set up to review all government payments, showed interest in the disbursement of the funds.
According to him, while PICA, in its recommendation to the government, mischievously reduced the sum to N43 billion, it increased the administrative charges to N2.1 billion without any recourse to percentage as recommended by the inter-ministerial committee.
“The final severance package to the former workers was N78 billion and the inter-ministerial committee set up for that purpose recommended one per cent administrative charges to any government agency that will carry out the disbursement. But, all of a sudden, PICA showed interest in the payment and reduced the sum to N43 billion. It, however, increased its administrative charge to N2.1 billion.
and then