Some key association within the technical division of the Ghana Civil Aviation Authority (GCAA) are raising red flags on issues of safety and seeming financial malfeasance in the Authority.
This is after the Transport Minister, Dzifa Attivor promised to address the concerns of the Air Traffic Controllers at the Kotoka International Airport who embarked on a sit down strike on Tuesday which resulted in the grounding of all domestic flights for hours.
The associations are the Ghana Air Traffic Controllers Association, Ghana Air Traffic Safety Electronics Association, Ghana Air Traffic Controllers Engineering Association, Ghana Aeronautical Information Services and the Aviation Inspectors Association of Ghana.
These groups are calling for urgent measures to be taken on critical matters threatening the entire civil aviation industry
Letters available to Citi Business News indicate that the associations have on several occasions since 2012, written to the Minister of Transport, and other relevant stakeholders about the failure of the management of the GCAA to adequately address their concerns.
They also accused the management of the GCAA for keeping the government, the previous and current board of directors of the Authority and Ghanaians in the dark over the challenges facing the industry.
One of the letters dated 16th December 2013 urged the Transport Minister, Dzifa Attivor to intervene to settle the growing frustration and agitation by their members.
Another letter dated 20th January 2014 made a tall list of demands including, the checking of the alarming decline in the safety oversight system in GCAA, a full scale investigation into all corrective actions to be complied by the GCCA with respect to international aviation audits, the appointment of a deputy director general (technical), an investigation into the authorities escrow accounts and number of accounts operated by the GCAA within and outside the country among others.
The Air Traffic Controllers in a letter said that “there has been an alarming decline in the safety oversight system in the GCAA, leading to the blacklisting of Ghana’s offshore registered cargo operator, Airlift and Meridian Airways.”
They are therefore demanding a full scale investigation into the matter and why the GCAA are seemingly unwilling to correct the problem.
By: citifmonline.com/Ghana