Thousands of air passengers are now relieved as the strike of employees at Jaipur Airport has been deferred. Airport Authority employees union, which had earlier called for a strike on February 20 against the privatization attempts of Jaipur airport, informed that it had deferred the strike seeing the current situation of mourning in the country.
In a letter addressed to the chairman of the airport authority, union’s general secretary Balraj Singh Ahlawat informed about this decision. The employees will, however, observe relay hunger strike from February 25.
The new has given relief to the officials at Jaipur airport who had made alternative arrangements so that the airport operations were not hit on Wednesday due to the strike. If the strike would have been conducted than it would have affected the air traffic control, fire management and other operations of the airport. However, the operations will be normal now without any hindrance.
In November last year, the Union government had decided to give airports at Jaipur along with Ahmedabad, Lucknow, Guwahati, Thiruvananthapuram and Mangaluru on PPP mode and thereafter airport authority staff at these airports had opposed this move. The airport employees had earlier too observed relay hunger strike but the process of PPP of the Jaipur airport went ahead. Sources informed that along with Jaipur, the bidding process for other airports is being done currently. As per the schedule of bidding process as issued by airport authority, a pre-bid meeting was convened on Thursday while if all goes as per the plan, the letter of award to the selected bidder will be issued on February 28.
Currently, the Jaipur airport is seeing large investment being made to renovate and to argument the capacity of the current infrastructure by airport authority.