LABOUR COURT JUDGE TURNS SCARE MONGER WITH WILD ALLEGATIONS ON AIRCRAFT SAFETY
(Posted 19th December 2017)
It has often been said here that the wings of Kenya’s militant aviation unions need to be clipped but the same seems to apply to the country’s Employment and Labour Relations Court or at least some of the judges, who in the past delivered one sided rulings often ignoring the underlying facts of cases before them.
The latest case In point is Judge Helen Wasilwa, who suddenly became a self styled expert in aviation safety when she remarked in her ruling – more about that in a moment – that flying in unserviced aircraft would not be safe for the public.
Assuming the powers of the aviation regulators, who to the best of this correspondent’s knowledge is the responsible authority in the country to ascertain continued airworthiness of aircraft registered in Kenya, has the judge done little but become a scare monger, alleging in essence that Kenya Airways’ aircraft are now unsafe because some wild cat strikers in the airline’s engineering department were sacked.
The judge ruled against Kenya Airways and directed the airline to reinstate the wildcat strikers but will probably find that KQ will challenge that ruling in a higher court, where similar rulings of this kind were in the past overturned, leaving the case judges with egg all over their faces.
Once a response by the airline has been seen, be sure to read it right here, but in the meantime does this correspondent have no shred of doubt that the KCAA, short for the Kenya Civil Aviation Authority, will do its job and ensure that all aircraft taking off and landing in Kenya are airworthy as spelled out under the respective Air Service Regulations currently in place.
Let the judge go by bus wherever she plans to travel to over the holidays but this correspondent would be more than happy to fly with Kenya Airways, anytime, anywhere!
