People's Democracy

CITU demands action against

Culprits for Air India Crisis

The CITU secretariat has issued the following statement on  May 7

THE CITU resents the repeated attempts by the Air India management to create industrial unrest by riding roughshod over its employees, who have genuine reasons of disenchantment and discontent caused by the hasty merger of Air India and Indian Airlines in 2007. The CITU strongly feels that these are planned diversionary attempts to shield the real culprits responsible for the financial and market loss to national carrier so that the sector is monopolised by the private operators under the so called “open sky” policy.

The CAG’s latest report as revealed in a section of media reaffirms that the present financial crisis of the national carrier is because of the wilful acts of omission and commission by the then civil aviation minister. The report points out that Air India lost Rs 10,000 crore because it was forced into buying 111 aircrafts, it did not need and the deal was despite the fact that the same would push Air India into a deeper financial crisis. The CITU points out that the parliamentary committee on public undertakings (COPU) headed by V Kishore Chandra Deo, in  its fourth report placed in the parliament on March 12, 2010 had specifically recommended that the reasons behind the undue haste in merger and lack of monitoring after the merger should be probed to fix the responsibility for the same and that the government must set up an effective monitoring mechanism to review the progress made on the revised merger schedule every quarter. The committee also recommended that all the loss attributable to merger of IA and AI should be recouped by the government as the decision of the merger was a policy decision spearheaded by the ministry-in-charge. The government has not taken any action on these recommendations so far.

The CITU strongly denounces the government’s lack of action on COPU recommendations and its eloquent silence on recent revelation on aircraft acquisition by the Air India. The CITU demands that the government should immediately implement the recommendations of COPU and order a CBI enquiry into aircraft acquisition without fail. The CITU strongly feels that unless the real culprits responsible for Air India’s present financial distress are brought to book, the provocative action by the AI management to create industrial unrest under one pretext or the other would continue.