Passengers Angry About Medview Airlines All-White Cabin Crew

In a country where over 35 million youths remain unemployed half of whom are university graduates, MedView Airlines parades an all-white cabin crew! This development forced the tongues of its many upset passengers wagging. Medview Airline is purely a domestic airline that shuttles travelers, mostly Nigerian nationals, to a number of destinations across the country.

In its flights VL 2107 & VL210 to Abuja and Lagos respectively, many passengers grumbled in hush tones wondering why a domestic airline would prefer to recruit expatriates to serve mere water and puff-puff aboard its local flights. This staffing arrangement forced me to remember a friend’s angry outburst the day he discovered that Phillipino expatriates make bed for oil company executives working offshore on the high seas of the Niger Delta where unemployment towers above 70%

“What is so special about having white-skinned hosts and hostesses? Why are the owners and promoters of these indigenous companies shifting their inferiority complex to the realm of business? Are they not aware that Nigerians have millions of unemployed graduates that are looking for jobs? Who are they trying to impress with this absurdity?”… very vexed passengers fired one after the other.

I have no time for murmuring. So, I went ahead to enquire directly from one of the white male member of the cabin crew who politely explained that they are not staff of Medview Airlines. Rather, they are the staff of Atlantic Airways specially invited by Medview Airlines for a 30-day operational assistance. Medview Airline’s Staff will take over after the 30-day invitation. All my attempts to explain my finding to other passengers were futile. They just wouldn’t agree that any aspect of inflight services in a domestic airline required expatriate intervention. As far as they are concerned, the cabin crew expatriates were carrying out extremely trivial roles that neither require any technical expertise nor investment of intellectual energy.

 It may be plausible to explain why Medview Airlines prefer oyibo pilots, but the idea of using oyibo airhostesses and other all-white cabin crew members to render inflight services seems quite outlandish.

It is important to emphasize that there is absolutely nothing wrong with having an all-white cabin crew. However, with Nigeria’s ever-rising unemployment rate which currently stands at 38%, it is easy to understand why the murmuring persisted. With a bulging population of young people desperately seeking opportunities to be engaged in meaningful work, Medview Airlines staffing practice is seemingly viewed as an affront to youth development and empowerment. Many find it shocking that private sector operators are not doing so much to bridge this widening unemployment gap.

If this Medview’s staffing request is designed to win the admiration of passengers and travelers alike, I dare say the strategy isn’t the most effective, at all! I hope they do the needful before the vexing goes viral…lol..

I rise!

source:

victoriaohaeri