The strike which grounded local airlines in Ghana over the weekend is likely to affect international flights soon if government does not take steps to release over 300 acres of airport lands for installation of aviation equipment.
This threat was issued by the Ghana Civil Aviation Authority Workers after an a meeting held between them and the Chief of Staff, Julius Debrah over encroachment and sale of airport lands to some private developers.
The workers agreed to the meeting and called off their earlier strike few hours after it took effect. After the meeting on Monday July 11 however the workers said “the meeting ended inconclusively” because they could not agree on some critical issues.
In an interview with Accra based Joy Fm, spokesperson for the Ghana Civil Aviation Authority (GCAA) workers, William Amoako said “we want these lands for the purposes we’ve stated. If things remain the way they are, we would resume our strike and this time we might even extend our action to the international flights.”
Questioned about how prepared they are considering the implications that may arise if they go ahead with their threat, Mr Amoako said “the question we should be asking is, is the country prepare for any eventuality should there be any problems because we have not installed the equipment?”
The workers say the over 640 acres of airport lands has been taken over by government and private developers, an action they say is injurious to the safety standards of Ghana’s aviation industry.
They say equipment worth over 600,000 Euros purchased by the authority have been left idle due to the unavailability of land According to the staff GCAA, two parcels of land at Adenta (La Nkwantana) and Labadi (La Wireless) have been encroached leaving them with limited space to install equipment for receiving and transmitting information.
Hundreds of passengers were stranded on Saturday following the strike by the GCAA workers. Most of them had to resort to bus transport from the major cities which were affected by the flights.
By Martin Asiedu-Dartey|3news.com|Ghana
Twitter: @3newsgh