4,000 workers get loan package in 2015

NO fewer than 4,000 members of the Fire Safety Cooperatives in the aviation industry in Nigeria have benefited from the various loans available to employees in the sector in the last one-year.

Speaking in Lagos on the activities of the cooperatives in the aviation industry in the last one year, the President, Fire Safety Cooperatives, Mr Richard Tella, said virtually every member numbering about 4,000 benefited from the different loans available for employees, adding that such loans attracted only 6 percent interest rate.
Tella disclosed that the 6 percent interest loan was redeemable within a period of 15 months.

According to him, the harsh economic situation has forced Nigerians to make cooperatives their last resort because of the difficulty in obtaining loans from the conventional banks.
He added that a mechanism had been put in place to checkmate the activities of loan defaulters as loans given out were deducted from source.

He expressed delight that the cooperatives had been able to assist members to have their own houses, cars and businesses through the loan scheme.
His words: “We bought new cars for members and two estates in Ogun State, we also have some block of flats at the police estate in Idimu in Lagos”

Tella explained that as part of expansion of its scope and to increase its revenue generation, the cooperatives was making frantic effort to acquire some plots of land within the airport for the construction of guest houses in Lagos and Abuja, adding that it will be subsidised for members when operational.