CHENNAI: For the 44 ‘bird scarers’, who ensure that the feathered friends stay off the airport runways by bursting crackers and chasing the winged visitors away, the future looks bleak thanks to a recent decision of the the Airports Authority of India (AAI) to not have any of them on the runways. The jobs of many of them, like 35-year-old Selvam (name changed), who have been working at the airport since 1995, might fly out of their hands.
Recently, while issuing fresh tenders calling for contracts, AAI made it a condition that none of those working at the airport at present can be engaged for the job.
The AAI was peeved with the present set of bird scarers, who were employed by a private contractor, as they had gone to court demanding that they be made regular employees.
Though the bird scarers lost their case in the court, AAI does not want to take any more risks in this regard.
“We have been working here, bursting crackers to scare away the birds, for almost 10 years now and that is what we do. We have every right to be an AAI employee,” said Selvam whose six-hour shift just required him to scare away birds.
An airport official said, “As bird scarer, each of them must have been getting up to Rs 4,000 from the contractor. But by becoming an AAI employee their salaries will definitely increase. Even a sweeper here gets around Rs 9,000. Moreover, they are not willing to do any other work. After this long association, we felt pity for them and tried to get them recruited with some ground handling agencies within the airport. But they didn’t want to do those jobs.”
A security source at the airport said, “After an incident in which some explosive cracker like object was found inside a Kingfisher aircraft in Kochi, the Bureau of Civil Aviation Security does not want to allow crackers on the runway. There is modern equipment available now. For instance, an instrument, Ultima, makes crying sounds of animals warning them of danger and hence keeping them away.”
However, officials said bird scarers were irreplaceable.
