Virus Attack Drains $700m From Nigeria’s Aviation Industry, 90,000 Jobs At Risk.
OMOTAYO ARAOYE
Nigeria’s Aviation sector is reeling under the impact of Covid-19 that has drained it of $700m and leaving 90,000 jobs at risk.
The sector’s activities over the past three months have dropped to 10 per cent resulting from the lockdown that has caused kept passengers from travelling due to the global precautionary measures to curb the spread of COVID-19 pandemic.
Africa Regional Director of the International Air Transport Association (IATA), Funke Adeyemi at a webinar, tagged, “A national conversation: Mapping Nigeria’s response to COVID-19″, Aviation is one of the hardest-hit sectors.
The reduction in travellings has led to a loss of $28.5 billion in GDP for Africa and put about three million jobs at risk, and for Nigeria, the loss was colossal as the industry had about $700m loss and about 90,000 jobs at risk across the entire value chain of aviation.”
The lockdown measure which also applied to the aviation sector has helped in putting the pandemic spread in check as the passengers’ traffic could have deepened the pandemic.
“Even though passenger travel was down and none existent, aviation was still supporting the fight against COVID-19 by ferrying medicines and essential provisions around the continentAviation continue to maintain its criticality – it’s not just a means of transportation; it is actually an economic business, which supports the fight against COVID-19” noted Adeyemi who revealed that IATA and other international bodies had reviewed more ways to make air travel safer for passengers.
She said, “The industry has been working proactively to see how we can mitigate the risk of spread where aviation is a vector for spreading and, at the same time, conveying passengers and the government. COVID-19 is with us for some time. There is no solution to it.
However, what the UN, IATA, and ICAO have come up with is a series of biosecurity temporary measures. It would look at the entire end-to-end passenger journey, right from pre-flight where we can collect passenger data and health declaration forms through established platforms, to travel procedures at the airports, and temperature checks.”
According to her, this will make sure there is physical distancing during boarding, and ensure the use of face masks in-flight as well as the filtering system on the aircraft.”
Adeyemi said collaboration between health authorities and the aviation sector would be crucial to the resumption of flight activities.
She said, “The collaboration between the health authorities and aviation sector, to ensure that the globally accepted measures for restarting and supporting aviation again are implemented, is really critical as this would help our ability to restart the economy. We have collaborated with the World Health Organisation and others to create globally accepted standards”.
The Federal Government earlier said that civil aviation authorities would determine the resumption of domestic flights in the country.
The aviation industry is expected to resume soon as they’ve requested to develop protocols to allow domestic flights to resume anytime from the 21st of June onwards.
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