People's Democracy

  Central TUs Oppose Airports Privatisation

The central trade unions – CITU, AITUC, AICCTU, HMS, TUCC, UTUC and UTUC-LS have jointly issued the following statement on June 4:

THE announcement made by the minister of civil aviation Praful Patel to privatise the Mumbai and Delhi airports under Airport Authorities of India (AAI) is just an attempt to carry forward the policies of the previous NDA government to privatise even the strategic and profit making PSUs.

The AAI is a profit making PSU, paying dividend to the government every year. It has doubled its profit during the last five years. The step initiated by the civil aviation ministry to privatise the airports is a clear-cut violation of the solemn commitment contained in the Common Minimum Programme that “the UPA government is committed to a strong and effective public sector whose social objectives are met by its commercial functioning. But for this, there is need for selectivity and a strategic focus.  The UPA is pledged to devolve full managerial and commercial autonomy to successful, profit making companies operating in a competitive environment. Generally profit making companies will not be privatised”.

The Mumbai and the Delhi airports contribute 70 per cent of the total profit of AAI. Privatisation of these two airports will result in making other airports sick and the AAI itself a sick PSU. Moreover, the AAI has reserves to the tune of around Rs 2,000 crore, which can be utilised for modernisation of ground services in these airports.

We resolutely oppose the present privatisation move. Further, we congratulate the employees of AAI for demonstrating their strong opposition to the privatisation move and extend full support to their struggle.

The signatories to the statement are : Chittabrata Majumdar (CITU), Swapan Mukherjee (AICCTU), Gurudas Dasgupta (AITUC), Umraomal Purohit (HMS), G Devarajan (TUCC), Abani Roy (UTUC) and Krishna Chakraborti (UTUC-LS). (INN)