People's Democracy

LEFT TELLS PM

‘Modernise, Not Privatise Metro Airports’

THE four Left parties, the CPI(M), CPI, RSP and AIFB, have addressed a letter to the prime minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, on November 26, 2005 expressing their opposition to any move to privatise the Mumbai and Delhi airports.

Below, we reproduce the full text of the letter which was signed by Prakash Karat, general secretary of CPI(M), A B Bardhan, general secretary of CPI, Debabrata Biswas, general secretary of Forward Bloc and Abani Roy, secretary of RSP.

WE invite your kind attention to the report of Parliamentary Standing Committee of Transport, Tourism & Culture on development of airport sector which was presented to parliament on August 23, 2005.  The committee has noted with concern that the modernisation and restructuring of Delhi and Mumbai airports are lingering on for a fairly long period on the plea of resource crunch which was used as a ploy to privatise the non-aeronautical services of these two airports of Airport Authority of India (AAI).

As a matter of fact, the obsession of the NDA government to privatise/lease the Metro Airports instead of modernising the same as per the proposal put up by AAI in 1993 and 1996, brought the entire process of development of these airports to a grinding halt.  We regret that in spite of the categorical commitment in NCMP not to privatise profit-making PSUs, UPA government continued to pursue the same route of privatisation of the top two major revenue-earning airports at Delhi and Mumbai.  The entire workforce of Airport Authority of India, under a joint forum including engineers, architects and professionals, have been strongly opposing this route of modernisation through privatisation and submitted an alternative plan to you on June 18, 2004 for modernization of Delhi and Mumbai airports with internal resources under the present set up of AAI.

As you are kindly aware AAI is consistently earning profit and it is having a reserve of Rs 2500 crore with a debt equity ratio of 1:1.5.  Thus finance can be easily tapped further from debt market for the purpose of financing the modernisation scheme costing Rs 5,000 to 6,000 crore in the first phase of five years as offered by some private bidders.  In absence of consensus pursuant to the consultation with the employees and in the light of alternative plan submitted by the employees, the best option, in our opinion, is to speed up the modernisation of these airports immediately through AAI instead of wasting any further time in going through a privatisation/joint venture route which apart from violating the spirit of NCMP is also vitiating the industrial relation scenario in the vital airport sector. With the assurance of viability funding from the government and necessary clearance to AAI to commercially lease part of their land, this is also the most expeditious route for modernisation.

We also draw your attention to the findings of the standing committee in the futility of the current proposals for addressing the mid term not to speak of the long term infrastructure requirements.  The ministry officials have themselves pointed out that so far as the current proposal for modernisation is concerned in Mumbai, no second runway can come up, while the augmentation of technical capacity is concerned, it will be just 10 to 15 per cent.  And they further pointed out that this modernisation cannot address projected demand beyond 2012.  Similarly, in Delhi the present phase does not address access to the airport and the question of traffic engineering and how it will ensure exit and entry to the terminal building.  Given this fact we feel the best course would be to go for creating truly huge capacity in Delhi and Mumbai and may be some other important metros through green field projects.  That is the way most of the South East Asian and East Asian countries have gone about in addressing this vital question.  In that case handing over the current modernisation programme can be left alone to the AAI which will fill in the infrastructure constraint temporarily till the new green fields are commissioned.

We, therefore, express our firm opposition to any unilateral decision of privatisation of Delhi and Mumbai airports, the two major profit centers of a consistently profit-making PSU, like AAI that too without consultation/agreement with its 22000 employees. (INN)