#Providenciales, August 10, 2019 – Turks and Caicos – Memes, social
media commentary, voice notes and at least one private sector partner lent
support to the disgruntled fire fighters of the Providenciales International
Airport, PLS in their stance for better work conditions.
“Thank God, I
haven’t had to see the fire fighters in major action yet but I’ve seen them
operate and react to a lot of minor incidents. We have one of the finest
in the Caribbean. These guys and women are an elite fire fighting force
and I think that we need to recognize them and we need to treat them as such.
So, I feel for them, I understand what their complaints are and I hope that we
are all going to be speaking to our representatives and encouraging the
Airports Authority to do their best with them,” said Deborah Aharon, CEO of
Provo Air Center during an interview with Magnetic Media on Friday.
Twenty of the
25 fire crew walked off the job on Thursday, citing their frustration at
requests for improvements and fairness on the job as reaching a breaking point
with the Turks and Caicos Islands Airports Authority, TCIAA.
Aharon, who
has been in the airline business for over 20-years explained, “We rely on them,
as we learned today, if they’re not working, nobody is moving. To me they
are heroes just for showing up every day.”
The fire
fighters claimed, “employment abuse” by the TCIAA and their strike left the
airport with insufficient fire fighters and crippled operations at the
country’s busiest airport. Flights on Friday were delayed and some
cancelled as a result of manpower shortage. The incident almost forced cancellations
at the Fixed Base Operators, FBOs or private airports.
“In the
beginning, it was a little bit scary because everybody had to stop;
interCaribbean, United, Delta and I think they had to make special arrangements
to get American off on-time today, which was a blessings, they came up with
work-arounds and some of the fire fighters started coming in to help. For
the FBO, the problem is that most of the one percent visitors are coming in on
large private jets, they are coming in on Challengers, Gulf Streams and those
are fire-fighting category six. So, for most of the day we were operating
at category five, so that meant that some of our customers could not come in
today or could not take off. Luckily the Airports Authority worked it
out, just before I had to start notifying customers.”
The 23 men
and two women which make up the fire crew at their airport told Magnetic Media
that they were treated unfairly by the Airports Authority. Overtime pay
was unpaid and sometimes their hours were adversely manipulated, the fire
station where the crew could spend up to 16-hours on shift, was run down
according to the spokesperson for the group.
Speaking to
us at her office at Provo Air Center, which is located on Aviation Drive,
Aharon said: “I don’t know much about it (the complaints) but I would
certainly hope that the Airports Authority is going to put every effort into
making sure that they have the comfortable working environment that they need.”
The fire
fighters on Friday afternoon managed to secure a meeting with the Premier, the
Governor and the Deputy Chairman of the TCIAA board; it led to an amicable end
to the stalemate and a return to work with the crew feeling optimistic about
concerns finally being addressed.
For Provo Air
Center, which handles the lion share of private flights to Providenciales, this
was great news.
“I really
hesitated to notify customers, because we don’t want this to get out into the
world. So, I think we dodged a major bullet today. I hope that
they’re going to keep the dialogue going and they’re going to reach a good
agreement in order for us not to have to face this again.”
Both Provo Air Center and Blue Heron Aviation share a site with the Providenciales International Airport. The fire fighters stationed at PLS are trained, equipped and mandated by international regulations to be on emergency stand-by in the event planes landing at either of the three facilities, experience trouble.
#magneticmedianews
#airportfirefightersstrike
#provoaircenter