Privatized air traffic control can lead to aviation disaster, union warns

Santo Domingo.- An alleged push to privatize air traffic control, including threats of laying off controllers could unleash an air disaster in the country, CNTD workers union president Jacobo Ramos warned Tuesday

He said the threats, uncertainty and anxiety he affirms air traffic controllers are subjected by Dominican Civil Aviation Institute (IDAC), director Alejandro Herrera, “is a great hazard to air navigation.”

He said Civil Aviation Law’s amendment seeks to privatize the sector, which in his view has unleashed a witch hunt against the Air Traffic Controllers Association’s members, who oppose the change to Law 491, which has been in effect for only five years, "but for their opposition workers have been suspended and forced to retire."

"We ask president Danilo Medina to intervene the IDAC, because this problem with the controllers association poses a threat to civil aviation safety and the lives of many passengers," Ramos said and called for an investigation into IDAC’s purchases of more than RD$1.5 billion without a call for tenders.