Thursday, March 30 2006 17:55 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

New Delhi: Airports Authority of India employees' representatives today (Mar 30, 2006) said they would not hesitate to go on strike again if the government went ahead with the privatisation of Delhi and Mumbai airports.

"We have not been officially intimated about any decision by the government of not including the privatisation of Delhi and Mumbai airports under the purview of the tripartite committee.

If they go ahead with the privatisation process without informing us, we won't hesitate to go on strike again," AAI Employees Joint Forum Convenor M K Ghoshal told a protest meeting here.

The threat came a day after the third meeting of the tripartite panel, comprising employees' representatives and officials of the Civil Aviation Ministry and AAI, set up on airport modernisation.

At the meeting yesterday, Ghoshal and other union leaders demanded that the government should give in writing that Delhi and Mumbai airports were beyond the purview of the committee.

He said the Forum had submitted an alternate plan to the government on modernisation of airports but it had not yet given any clarification on the status of the report that had been submitted to the official review committee.

Government's stand on the report

"Even after three meetings of the tripartite committee, we don't know the government's stand on the report we have submitted," he said.

The Ministry had yesterday stated that privatisation of Delhi and Mumbai airports were beyond the jurisdication of the tripartite committee, set up in the wake of the four-day strike by airport employees in February.

Meanwhile, trade unions from other PSUs units have also joined hands with AAIEJF against any move to privatise the state-owned enterprise.

"It is no longer an issue of the employees of AAI, but for all the employees of the public sector units, which the government is trying to sell off against the agreed CMP of the UPA government," CITU leader Dipankar Mukherjee said.

He said the government has been time and again violating the agreement in the CMP of not confronting with the employees of the PSUs.

Stating that the employees of PSUs won't budge against any attempt by the government to privatise the public enterprises, BPCL employees union leader Ramashankar said, "the employees should remind the government of what happened when attempts were made to privatise IOC, BPCL and HPCL."

"If we could stop them then, we should be able to stop them now also," Ramashankar said.