NEW DELHI: Hundreds of Airports Authority of India (AAI) began a three-day relay hunger strike on Monday to protest against the central government’s move to privatise six airports. In November, the Centre had approved a proposal to manage six AAI-owned airports under a public-private partnership. These six
airports are Ahmedabad, Jaipur, Lucknow, Guwahati, Thiruvananthapuram, and Mangaluru.
However, the AAI employees union is opposing this initiative. Earlier, they had staged nation-wide protests against the government’s decision to privatise these six profit-making airports. Balraj Singh Ahlawat, general secretary of the Airports Authority Employees Union (AAEU), is of the view that the move will affect employees as well as customers. He said the relay hunger strike will not impact operations which will continue as, “We don’t want passengers to face any kind of inconvenience”.
The union said privatisation would lead to further exploitation of the workers.
“The AAI-managed airports have reservations for the people from Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, which provides them with opportunities for work,” the union said.“However, after privatisation, staff will be hired only on contractual basis. And these contractual staff will be exploited by the private operators. We have seen this happen previously,” the AAI staff union claimed.
Seeking Rights
The AAEU, representing 9,000 employees, had staged protests on December 4
The union also warned staff would go on mass casual leave from December 28
There are around 15,000 to 16,000 employees employed with the AAI