Why it's time to close down Kenya Airways
A photo taken on November 5, 2022 shows Kenya Airways planes at the JKIA parking bay.
Every time there is a strike, for anything, Kenyans have a tendency to automatically assume that the people striking – in this case Kenya Airways pilots, are greedy, money hungry opportunists.
You can have your opinions about what pilots should be paid (people had their opinions for the doctors’ strike too. And the nurses. And anyone who dares to say they deserve more, really). On the one hand, everyone should be being paid what they are worth. Absolutely. Especially when you’re doing something as important as keeping a plane in the air.
Even if you’re not, to be honest, everyone should be fairly compensated for their work. No argument there. Lord knows we live in a country that overpays fatcat politicians and underpays the people who actually keep the country running, which really is one of the many signs of the extent of degradation in our society.
On the other hand, giving pilots the arrears which they are owed, among the other list of demands, will come directly out of taxpayers' pockets. No doubt about it. Kenya Airways has been a defunct, cripplingly unstable business for at least the last decade. Why are we still in the skies? Because the government keeps bailing the failing company out, to the tune of billions.
Who’s funding the government? Taxpayers. Where do you think those arrears are going to come from? Us.
Bad investment
The problem here is not the staff, you see. The problem here is the management, both of the airline and the ones in government who think it is ok to keep throwing money at a bad investment.
But just because a lot of time was spent making a mistake doesn’t mean it should keep being made. At ten years of losing money, it is time to close down. At ten years of losing money in an enterprise funded directly by civilians, the closing down should have been done five years ago.
And the fact that a strike notice was announced, and this could have been avoided (you have, what, 21 days to negotiate? Negotiate better, surely)? Passengers could have and should have been on their way home instead of being stranded on flight routes as KQ offers paltry sums for compensation. Isn’t this what management is supposed to do? Manage?
The Pride of Africa can’t close down! I hear you saying. But it is no longer the pride of anything, is it? They’re not paying the pilots (most likely due to the mismanagement we talked about) and some of the planes are in disrepair. The government and taxpayers are losing more money in this terrible investment.
No one is happy here except whoever is stealing the money owed to these pilots. They’re probably waiting for the hullabaloo to die down so that their crimes can continue. They’re the ones encouraging KQ to offer contractual First Officer jobs so that they know that their labour is cheap (remember when they did this exact same thing with nurses?)
We all took pay cuts during Covid-19. In fact, for some of us, those funds are still unrestored. But how long should this last, really – when you can literally see the papers being sold, or the planes being flown? How long are pilots expected to watch KQ turn a negative profit, supposedly, as the CEO’s salary gets bigger and bigger with each dispensation?
Follow the money, whoever is supposed to be doing this negotiation. When you follow the money, and the accounting, it’ll be easy to see who’s got their dirty little fingers in the pilots’ pie – and then you’ll be able to give them a slice of it back.
