The Professional Association of Air Traffic Controllers in Senegal (APCCAS) and the Syndicat des Aiguilleurs du Ciel du Senegal (SACS) jointly signed a press release yesterday to comment on the critical situation of air traffic control in the ATS center in Dakar. Deploring a glaring lack of material resources and an understaffing of personnel in their sector of activity, trade unionists are threatening to restrict air traffic.
The Senegalese airport sector is under tension. Two major trade union organizations operating in the field have joined forces to denounce the conditions in which air traffic control professionals live in the country;
In a press release received yesterday by “L’AS”, the Professional Association of Air Traffic Controllers in Senegal (APCCAS) and the Union of Air Traffic Controllers of Senegal (SACS) announced that the Regional Air Navigation Center (CRNA) of Dakar and the control tower of DIASS airport are encountering major difficulties mainly linked to the advanced obsolescence of the technical means used for the provision of air navigation services.
According to the two union entities, this situation aggravates a context of glaring lack of staff that they have deplored for several years. A lack of staff which, they emphasize, was already the subject of point 16 of the demands during the September 2022 strike led by all ASECNA air traffic controllers, “the problem being common to all centers ”. Already in 2019, they add, air traffic controllers, working in these two (2) aforementioned organizations, had started to issue alerts and have since then continued to warn the authorities of ASECNA, ANACIM and the supervisory ministry
However, over the last two (2) years, the situation has worsened, they deplore. Not without indicating that it is therefore in this context that air traffic controllers live who have on their shoulders the responsibility for guiding and ensuring the safety of the movement of all civil and military aircraft in the air and on the ground, including the presidential plane. “This is how, after having alerted so much, and demonstrated so much resilience to manage the airspace of nearly four (4) million km² under our responsibility, with maximum professionalism, we air traffic controllers of the Center ATS of Dakar gathered in an Extraordinary General Assembly on Thursday, December 12, 2024, we unanimously declare that we are no longer able to manage the air traffic entrusted to us in a safe, regular and orderly manner,” inform the two unions in a note sent to the editorial office.
Consequently, in the absence of activation by ASECNA of the exceptional measure plan also called contingency plan, the two union associations say they reserve the right to take measures restricting air traffic in order to reduce the workload. at a level reasonably manageable by the workforce and technical means currently available to preserve the safety of millions of travelers, the health of air traffic controllers as well as our work tools.
