By Joseph L. Kamara
Former workers of the Sierra National Airlines (SNA) have dragged the Government of Sierra Leone to the ECOWAS Court in Nigeria.
A lawyer acting for the aggrieved former workers, Maurice Garber says the Attorney General and Minister of Justice has already been served the full application by the Registrar of the court and that he has 30 days within which to respond. Once that is done a date will be fixed for the matter to come up in the court which is based in Abuja.
A court application dated June 2014 claims the 180 former employees have also sued SNA which was owned by the government of Sierra Leone and is currently in liquidation, struggling to pay terminal employment benefits, pension and redundancy benefits and other emoluments to the said employees. They allege that the Republic of Sierra Leone (1st Defendant) and the Sierra National Airlines (2nd Defendants) owe them over Le 17 billion.
Not only that, according to the application, they also allege that the defendants have to pay them over Le 722 million plus interest.
These amounts do not include the compensation for the pension contributions to NASSIT, from 2009 to date, which amounts to over Le 230 million, an amount that also excludes the general damages in the sum of US$ 1 million in favour of the plaintiffs, as they claim.
The defendants have also claimed that between 2006, when the operation of the company was transferred to a third party, and February 2014, 36 of them died while waiting for their end-of-term benefits.
(C) Politico 24/06/14
