Daily Watch – Aero suspends services, Ghana confirms Marburg virus cases
19th July 2022
The Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) will embark on a two-day protest on July 26 to demonstrate against the six-month shutdown of public universities across the country due to pay disagreements between the government and teachers. The NLC, the country’s main umbrella union, represents millions of workers across most sectors of Africa’s biggest economy, including parts of the oil industry. The union said it will mobilise workers for the protest for good governance. Workers in the oil and gas industry have also threatened to join the striking teachers, a situation that could worsen fuel shortages in the country. The Association of Nigeria Aviation Professionals (ANAP) has also threatened to shut down airports in Nigeria as a result of the lasting strike by the Academic Staff Union of Universities. The union’s General Secretary Abdulrasaq Saidu made this known on Monday. The union noted that the strike has ridiculed Nigeria’s educational system thereby making it a laughing stock.
Workers below 40 years under the Contributory Pension Scheme rose from 73 percent at the end of 2021 to 86.4 percent by the end of the first quarter of 2022. The National Pension Commission disclosed this in its quarterly report on the ‘Age and Gender Distribution’ report for Q1, 2022. According to PenCom, this showed that the CPS had an increasing sustainability level. The report also showed that male contributors dominated the Retirement Savings Account holders’ list. “Regarding gender distribution, 66 percent of those registered during the quarter were male, while 34 percent were female.” According to PenCom, 9,621,979 workers had Retirement Savings Accounts during the period under review. The figures showed that 3.5 million workers were less than 30 years; 3.35 million were between 30 and 39 years; 1.79 million were between 40 and 49 years; 709,748 were between 50 and 59 years; 65,136 were between 60 and 65 years, while 27,632 were above 65 years.
The management of Aero Contractors has announced the temporary suspension of its airline’s scheduled passenger services operations with effect from Wednesday, 20 July, attributing it to the impact of the challenging operating environment on its daily operations. But this is not in any way going to affect the maintenance activities of the Approved Maintenance Organisation (AMO) otherwise known as AeroMRO, the Approved Training Organisation (ATO) also known as Aero Training School, and the Helicopter and Charter Services operations. The airline said on Monday that the decision was carefully considered and taken due to the fact that most of its aircraft are currently undergoing maintenance, resulting in the airline’s inability to offer a seamless and efficient service to its esteemed customers.
Ghana has officially confirmed two cases of the Marburg virus, a highly infectious disease similar to Ebola, after two people who later died, tested positive for the virus earlier this month. The World Health Organisation stated that tests conducted in Ghana came back positive on 10 July but the results had to be verified by a laboratory in Senegal for the cases to be considered confirmed. “Further testing at the Institut Pasteur in Dakar, Senegal has corroborated the results,” Ghana Health Service (GHS) said. GHS is working to reduce any risk of the virus spreading, including the isolation of all identified contacts, none of whom have developed any symptoms so far, it said. This is only the second outbreak of Marburg in West Africa. The first ever case of the virus in the region was detected last year in Guinea, with no further cases identified.