Airport staff union climbs down, strike from dawn to dusk

Under increasing pressure from its constituents, the Airports Authority Employees Joint Forum decided tonight to hold only a dawn-to-dusk pr...

Under increasing pressure from its constituents, the Airports Authority Employees Joint Forum decided tonight to hold only a dawn-to-dusk protest instead of a 24-hour strike.

The Forum convenor and general secretary of the AAI Employees Union M.K. Ghosal justified the scaling down as an effort to reduce public inconvenience. ‘‘We do not want the people to suffer, but we also want to highlight our demand that privatisation of Delhi and Mumbai airports should be stopped forthwith. So we have decided now to strike work only from 0700 hours tomorrow morning till 1900 hours,” Ghosal said. The decision came around the time Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel said in Mumbai that he had asked the union to withdraw its strike.

Demonstrations, however, were held at Indira Gandhi International Airport late tonight by a large number of employees. The forum, an umbrella body of a handful of associations representing AAI employees, does not have the support of the Air Traffic Controllers’ Guild.

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The ATCOs, in fact, fear that they may be prevented from going to work in Kolkata given the Left’s strong presence there. They requested for security today after some agitating employees threw out the reserves they had stocked at Kolkata to survive the one-day strike without having to step outside the control tower.

Air services are likely to be affected especially in West Bengal and Kerala.

While the forum claims that 20,000 AAI employees will strike work against the government’s move to privatise Delhi and Mumbai airports, some of the key associations, especially including officers in the international airports, have not endorsed the call.

Major domestic airlines, however, have planned to club a number of flights and cancel some services, with the Civil Aviation Ministry estimating that passenger movement would be low tomorrow. The Ministry has evolved a contingency plan involving the Indian Air Force.

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Civil Aviation Secretary Ajay Prasad said the Bureau of Civil Aviation Security (BCAS) has also issued a notification to act against those indulging in ‘‘violence or sabotage’’.

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