Austerity Freezes Tassili Airlines' Deal To Buy Airplanes

Prime Minister, Ahmed Ouyahia, ordered the freezing of the acquisition of three airplanes for Tassili Airlines company, which is a branch of Sonatrach, due to austerity, at a time when the company noticed several protests recently due to mismanagement and disruptions.

A letter that was sent by the Prime Minister, Ahmed Ouyahia, to the Energy Minister, Mustapha Guitouni, which copy is available to Echorouk, dated on November 28, 2017, stated; “We are informed that Tassili Airlines, Sonatrach Branch, announced a tender for the purchase of three new 70-seats aircraft.”

 “I ask you to inform the company of the decision of the government to freeze the deal because of the annual budget situation of the country that requires austerity in some expenses”, the minister said in a letter to the Energy Minister. 

PM Ouyahia asked the Energy Minister to prepare a detailed report on the assessment of the development and growth of Tassili Airlines as well.

The correspondence comes at a time when Tassili Airlines is suffering from internal congestion and malfunctions that have driven the staff, maintenance workers, pilots or hostesses to block air traffic and go on a strike in the recent months, and despite calling the syndicate’s representatives to the dialogue table by the General Manager of Tassili Airlines, but they did not receive any answers to their demands, which the General Manager limited, in his latest statement, to raising wages, a requirement that he said is impossible in the current situation because of the financial crisis of the company like the other economic companies.

Representatives of the workers syndicates, flight attendants and pilots of the same company will attend an emergency meeting soon, and submit a petition and report on the status of the company to the General Manager of Sonatrach and the Minister of Energy, and keeping with their demands that made them protest more than once, and which are represented in saving the company from bad management and applying the social convention and reviewing the grant system, adding that their demands are not to raise wages as stated by the General Manager, but to improve the working conditions and the implementation of the terms of the convention, and benefiting from the grants that are stipulated according to the career ladder for each worker.