The workers’ committee of Mozambican airline LAM is calling for “exemplary accountability” for any employee involved in the “embezzlement” of the airline, but criticises the disclosure of alleged cases of embezzlement and sabotage only by the media.
“The union is not in favour of, nor does it condone, workers and managers from the bottom to the top who squander and misappropriate LAM’s assets and encourages the exemplary accountability of any wrongdoer by the competent internal and external bodies,” reads a statement from the workers’ committee.
With regard to the alleged sabotage inside the company, also denounced this week by the company FMA, which manages and is responsible for revitalising LAM, the workers’ committee of the National Union of Civil Aviation, Postal and Communications Workers states that “if proven”, this representative structure “will not support” these actions either, “which do not dignify workers in general”.
However, as long as the workers allegedly responsible for these practices have not been identified, it distances itself from these accusations: “If there is material evidence of one or a group of workers who are alleged saboteurs, they must be identified, investigated and held responsible in accordance with the Labour Law and the Company’s Internal Regulations,” it reads.
On Monday, at a press conference, the South African company that is managing LAM revealed schemes to embezzle almost three million euros in ticket shops through automatic payment terminal machines (TPA/POS) that do not belong to the company.
“We did a lightning job with LAM’s internal security to collect all the POS and, of LAM’s 20 ticket sales points, we had collected 81 POS by Sunday. There are some shops where the managers themselves don’t recognise the machines and say they don’t even know who they belong to,” said Sérgio Matos, who is responsible for restructuring LAM, at a press conference in Maputo.
LAM is in the process of being revitalised, with the South African company Fly Modern Ark (FMA) managing it since April last year and a restructuring plan underway.
“The union is the body that by law should be informed in the first instance of all matters related to the worker, and in this matter it has not had this information, neither from the FMA nor from the general management [of LAM],” the company committee criticised.
According to the information provided at Monday’s press conference, the inspection began almost a fortnight ago, when the company realised that, although the number of tickets sold is rising, the accounts are still far from what was expected.
“We’re selling, but the company isn’t getting all the money and in the last three months of evaluations we’ve seen that the difference we were getting was between two million dollars (1.8 million euros) and three million dollars (2.7 million euros). In December alone, we had a deficit of 3.2 million dollars (2.9 million euros),” noted Sérgio Matos.
He also said that the inspection recorded suspicious cases even in the collection of cash in shops and that the inspection also identified anomalies in the fuelling of aircraft.
“If an aircraft has a maximum fuel capacity of around 80,000 litres, we call it 80 tonnes, [in the documents] the same aircraft is being fuelled at 95 tonnes. So the question is where the remaining 15 tonnes are going,” he asked.
In addition to these situations, LAM’s restructuring director denounced the discovery of an account in Malawi with 1.2 million dollars (1.1 million euros), to which no one in the company has access.
The company’s revitalisation strategy follows years of operational problems related to a reduced fleet and a lack of investment, with a record of some incidents, not fatal, associated by experts with poor aircraft maintenance.
Lusa
