People's Democracy

CITU Demands Resignation Of Civil Aviation Minister

THE Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU) demanded the immediate resignation of the union civil aviation minister for unabashedly expressing support to the cartel formation by the private airlines and his insensitive response to the layoff of 1500 young employees of Jet Airways.

In a statement issued on October 16, 2008, the CITU general secretary Md Amin demanded an urgent enquiry by the Competition Commission into the cartel formation as also a government investigation into the subject of funding sources of Jet Airways which appears to have had a major role in the so-called crisis faced by Jet Airways.

The CITU also strongly resented the statement of chairman-cum-managing director of Air India proposing to lay off 15,000 staff for five years. �This proposal has been mooted by Air India soon after formation of a cartel between Jet Airways and Kingfisher Airlines, who had asked Air India to join hands with them. The statement of the CMD is obviously to create a panic scenario to force the government to provide a �Bail Out� plan for the private airlines business, specially to the newly formed �cartel�, who are having 60 per cent market share between them today only because of consistent backing and concession at the behest of the minister of civil aviation.�

While demanding immediate withdrawal of all retrenchment orders in Jet Airways, CITU warned the Air India authorities not to resort any layoff at the behest of private airliners and the minister.