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CITU EXTENDS SUPPORT TO UNITED COUNTRYWIDE STRUGGLE OF AIRPORT EMPLOYEES
AGAINST PRIVATISATION OF AIRPORTS
24.10.2013

The Centre of Indian Trade Unions extends total support to the ongoing united struggle by the employees of Airport Authority of India against the retrograde move of the Govt to hand over 20 major airports of the country to private players on a revenue sharing basis.

The Joint Forum of Unions and Associations of AAI comprising all the unions of AAI employees have been conducting the struggle. They have successfully resisted the inspection of airports by the team of private players at Chennai and Lucknow and have now been staging relay hunger strike in all the AAI-run airports of the country where employees irrespective of affiliations have joined enmasse. Their struggle has also drawn support from all the trade unions in the country who have also expressed their solidarity to the ant-privatisation struggle by AAI employees. In the days to come their united agitation to resist the privatisation is going to be heightened further.

The Govt of India has planned to privatise 20 major revenue earning airports of the country through so called PPP route viz. the airports at Chennai, Kolkata, Lucknow, Guwahati, Jaipur, Ahmedabad, Bhubaneswar, Coimbatore, Trichy, Varanasi, Indore, Amritsar, Udaipur, Gaya, Raipur, Bhopal, Agartala, Imphal, Mangalore and Voadodara on a revenue sharing basis. Most of these airports have already been modernized and expanded with huge investment from the state owned AAI’s exchequer, to the tune of Rs 20,000 crore plus and now these readymade renovated airports are being sought to be handed over to private control free of cost on a revenue sharing basis. Can there be anything more scandalous than that?

CITU condemns such retrograde move of handing over huge public property to private hands free of cost to facilitate windfall gain by private operators without making any investment whatsoever and likes to remind that theses public properties belong to the nation and not the council of ministers of the UPA Govt.

CITU calls upon the working people of the country and the trade union movement in particular to unitedly oppose such disastrous move of privatization of airports and extend all support and solidarity to the united struggle of the AAI employees in defence of country’s airport infrastructure.