Cooperative Societies in the aviation industry whose members are in the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria, FAAN, are cash trapped and cannot fulfill the promise of ensuring that the welfare of members are taken care of.
The disbursement of loans and ensuring commodities especially food items are made available to members has been hindered with paucity of funds.
These problems have been attributed to the non remittance of over N1.6 billion to the Cooperatives by the Management of the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) since the out break of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Reports revealed that the deductions from 33 Cooperative Societies with the highest numbers of FAAN staff have not been remitted.
The Management of FAAN investigation revealed, cannot remit the deductions due to non revenue generation because of the closure of the airports in the country since the Covid 19 pandemic.
According to investigation, the deductions were made from April till date, but half of April deductions has been remitted, while the other half in April and the full ones in the months of May, June, July and August are outstanding.
An official of one of the cooperative societies at the airport decried the non remittance of funds to them by FAAN Management, saying it had negatively affected their disbursement of loans to members especially during the wake of the Covid-19 which had affected their welfare.
“Unfortunately, we have not been able to give members loan since May. The last loan we gave was in April and our members are not happy with the development at all. It has affected their welfare and well being so negatively”
The source disclosed that the cooperatives have been struggling to ensure that commodities, especially food items were available to their members non stop adding that very soon it would be difficult to get commodities stocked in their shops.
Another Cooperative leader laments “We are visibly constrained by this development as FAAN has the highest percentage of remittance in terms of savings and loans servicing. The consequences are monumental as we can no longer meet our statutory obligations to the teeming FAAN members”
“We are trying to manage the crisis. All the set goals regarding our roadmap are actively distorted. But we are not loosing focus. We have started unfolding our plans pre Covid-19. We will start from where we stopped by His grace when the situation normalizes”.
The spokesperson for FAAN, Mrs. Henrietta Yakubu disclosed FAAN had commenced payment of the money to the cooperatives but unfortunately, one of the Cooperative leaders said this was not true, adding that the only payment made was half for the month of April.
