Minister U-turn on airhostess course

Under fire over his comments to The Indian Express that tribal women who had enrolled for an airhostess course were not physically appealing enough to get cabin crew jobs....

Under fire over his comments to The Indian Express that tribal women who had enrolled for an airhostess course were not physically appealing enough to get cabin crew jobs,Maharashtra Tribal Development Minister Babanrao Pachpute said on Thursday that the government would not scrap the course but study what else could be done to ensure the graduates got jobs.

Pachpute faced the ire of the opposition parties after the issue was raised in the Assembly by BJP MLAs Vishnu Sawra and Chintaman Vanga. Speaker Dilip Valse-Patil,however,did not allow the motion. The minister said that the government had written to the selection committee asking what else needed to be done to ensure the girls were trained better for cabin crew jobs.

The Indian Express had reported on Monday that none of the more than 100 tribal students of the privately-run Air Hostess Academy in Pune had got jobs as cabin crew despite undergoing training for a year under a special programme designed by the state government and launched in 2007.

They are not physically appealing and because of their strong local accent,they are not good communicators too, Pachpute had said,adding that the government had decided to scrap the programme. His comments had triggered street protests by the womens wing of the BJP. On Thursday,Leader of Opposition Eknath Khadse,referring to the Express report,called the issue serious and said that Pachputes statements had outraged tribals.

Khadse asked Pachpute how he could lay down the definition of physical beauty.