Sudan forced to pay salary of national airline staff

Sudan’s Ministry of Defence yesterday confirmed that the national airline, Sudan Airways, is running at such a huge loss that employees’ salaries had to be paid directly by the Ministry of Finance last month, the state minister explained.

Speaking to a session before the Sudanese parliament, the Defence State Minister, Ali Salim, confirmed:

We have no income from our planes at Sudanair and Sudan Airways; we are working at a loss and so the finance ministry was forced to pay employee’s salaries last month.

“Our situation is extremely bad to the degree that our planes can hardly make journeys internally let alone to Europe,” he added.

The civil aviation industry has steadily deteriorated, over the past few years, mainly because of the airline’s inability to replace its operating fleet. Salim confirmed the airline was now running at a severely reduced capacity.

Salim said that the ministry was hopeful that the recent ending of sanctions by the US administration on Sudan would lead to an opportunity to revitalise the sector. Salim said the ministry had identified up to 80 areas and prepared a strategic plan to reinvigorate civil aviation in the period up to 2031. He added that the strategy included plans to expand the number of internal flights.

However, the minister suggested that the civil aviation industry ought to be under the control of the Council of Ministers and the Ministry of Transport so that the duties of the Defence ministry would be limited to the protection of airports.