Staff to ground airports today, to save skin won't call it a ‘strike'

Hours after the Civil Aviation Ministry confirmed the closure from March 16 of the existing Begumpet airport in Hyderabad - the day the new Rajiv Gandhi International Airport at Shamshabad commences operations - airport employees, responding to calls by their unions, struck work indefinitely across the country from Tuesday midnight in protest against the move to shut down the old airports at Hyderabad and Bangalore.

Though initial reports from airports in Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata indicated there was no immediate disruption of either domestic or international flights, this action by employees is likely to affect operations at airports across the country. Delhi and Mumbai airports are not likely to be very badly hit because the private operators there have increased the presence of their personnel.

Declining to call their action a strike and referring to it as a "non-cooperation movement", Airport Authority Employees Union general secretary M K Ghoshal said: "We will report at airports as per our scheduled timings but will not work." Taking a tough stand,

To read the full article, click here..
To read the ePaper, visit: http://epaper.indianexpress.com