SriLankan unions furious over Harry’s removal

The national carrier’s top five unions were stunned on Friday when the Government snubbed their appeal to President Mahinda Rajapaksa to reappoint business tycoon Harry Jayawardena as Chairman of SriLankan Airlines. The Government instead appointed Treasury Secretary P.B. Jayasundera to the post.

It was only on Thursday that the five main unions in the airline - the Sri Lanka Nidahas Sevaka Sangamaya, the Flight Attendants’ Union, the Pilots’ Guild, the Licenced Engineers’ Union and the Technicians’ Union delivered a signed appeal to President Rajapaksa calling on him to retain business tycoon Harry Jayawardena as its Executive Chairman to revive the airline, which is wracked by problems of brain drain and mismanagement.

Unions said that Mr. Jayawardena already had precise plans to re-fleet the airline, which was now without any of its own planes and that he had even had made arrangements to tie up with a highly successful Asian airline.

With the bulk of the employees not having faith in the management with the latest appointments, union sources said they could now expect a far greater exodus of trained personnel. Flight Attendants’ Union sources said they had already lost about 40 stewards and at least 20 more had already been selected by the Emirates. According to Pilots’ Guild sources they have already lost 28 pilots in recent months to other airlines and many more are now likely to leave, especially with Indian carriers like Kingfisher offering as much as US$12,000 per pilot plus free accommodation and international standard schooling for children.

The airline has already lost 20 percent of its licensed engineering cadre to other airlines and many others are already toying with job offers, both from India and West Asia, the union sources said.

Meanwhile the other troubled State owned airline, Mihin Air, which was hastily launched in April last year is also said to be going from bad to worse. Its top executives have still not been paid their February fuel allowance. As they had not even received their March salaries up to yesterday, they told The Sunday Times last night they are no longer able to buy fuel for their vehicles.

Expensive ground handling equipment the airline hastily got down recently, including two brand new buses are now gathering dust and cobwebs at the airport. It hastily ordered these not realizing that the new way-bridges provided by Airport and Aviation Services to aircraft from the terminal make items like step ladders and buses redundant.

A formal announcement by SriLankan Airlines on Friday said that the other Board Directors would be Nishantha Wickremasinghe, Lalith De Silva and Sunil Wijesinha to represent the Government which holds 51.05% shares, while Emirates Airline holding 43.06% shares will be represented by Tim Clark, Gary Chapman and Nigel Hopkins.