The Ogle airport has been facing long periods of being completely unmanned after Air Traffic Controllers from there as well as the Cheddi Jagan International Airport, Timehri started a sickout on Friday after a payout was halted. Pilots flying in and out of Ogle were forced to operate by Standing Operat-ing Procedures as directed by the Guyana Civil Aviation Authority (GCAA) in such situations and at hinterland airstrips where there are no traffic control towers or operators.
However, once they are more than five miles from Ogle, pilots could switch over to the Timehri tower and file flight plans with it.
Stabroek News was reliably informed that many operators from Ogle also reported sick and while the tower may have been initially manned by at least two persons, this was not the case on Saturday and yesterday.
Meanwhile, this newspaper was reliably informed that Transport Minister Robeson Benn is expected to sit in on an urgent meeting of the GCAA management today from which an amicable solution is to be sought to the current issues.
Staff who participated in the sickout will however have to provide medicals from an authorized aviation medical examiner, as instructed by management by way of a memo circulated on Friday, this newspaper was told.
Efforts to contact Benn for comment yesterday proved futile.
However on Saturday he had said that senior aviation officials were manning the Timehri tower and a system was implemented for the weekend. The controllers on Friday decided to take the action after Benn blocked $18M in back pay for the staff. Benn told Stabroek News on Friday that neither he nor Finance Minister Ashni Singh was aware of the intended payout and had not approved it.
Staff were reportedly told in a memo that their payments had already been prepared, but following a visit to the office by Benn, they were subsequently informed that their monies would be withheld. Benn has since promised to review the issue and some resolution is expected by tomorrow.
Since 2003, when the government had announced across-the-board increases, the GCAA, a semi-autono-mous body, had only added increments to its salaries.
Staff reportedly became aware of their entitlement sometime in November last year and approached management. As a result, they began to benefit from an adjusted salary scale from January. However, there was still the matter of the outstanding back payments, the source said, and employees were led to believe that they would see this reflected in their January salaries, and then in their February salaries. Subse-quently they were said to have been assured that the payments would be made by the end of February.
Benn has said that since the GCAA is an autonomous agency, payments are made based only on the ability to pay and after approval by the minister.
