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New Delhi: Passengers at airports across India could face delays as thousands of airport employees plan to go ahead with an indefinite strike after talks with the government broke down.
The strike will affect 127 airports across the country run by the Airports Authority of India (AAI), said M.K. Ghoshal, the general secretary of the AAI employees' union.
About 14,000 union members will strike over the imminent ending of commercial flights at old airports in the southern cities of Hyderabad and Bangalore, both home to many of India's software and outsourcing companies.
New airports with better facilities built by private developers are due to open soon in both cities. The union says that when that happens, staff at the old airports will lose their jobs or get shifted elsewhere.
Talks with the government and the AAI have so far failed.
Original plan
"We will not cooperate with the authorities from today midnight," he said yesterday. "We have to stick to our original plan as the government has not even bothered to sit across the table and resolve the issue."
Indian authorities yesterday decided to clamp down on the airport workers invoking the Essential Services Maintenance Act (ESMA) to deal with their threatened strike.
The decision to invoke ESMA, which declares any strike illegal, was taken after failure of talks with the airport workers' union. The union leaders have said they are proceeding on an indefinite strike from midnight of Tuesday-Wednesday.
As a contingency plan, the civil aviation authorities have enlisted services of 479 Air Force personnel who have already moved to 21 major airports to deal with any eventuality and ensure normalcy of services. An Air Force spokesman said that their personnel have already taken positions at these airports including those in Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Bangalore and Hyderabad.
Hardening of stand
Federal Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel cancelled his scheduled press conference in the evening, signalling hardening of stand and failure of talks with the members of the Airport Authority Employees Joint Front. Nearly 14,000 airport workers across 127 airports are supposed to join the strike, although the union leaders officially call it non-cooperation agitation.
The airport workers gave the call for strike in February in protest against the proposed opening of two private airports in Bangalore and Hyderabad. The new Hyderabad airport is scheduled to be inaugurated by the ruling Congress party chief Sonia Gandhi on Friday, while the new Bangalore airport will become operational later this month.
The unions wanted the old airports, which are supposed to be shut down for commercial operations, wanted the existing airports to remain operational, although the memorandum of understanding singed with the private developers is clear that the old airports would be shut down.
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