With a shortfall of 19%, the House panel called for immediate steps to fill up the vacancies.
At some of the country’s busiest airports, such as Delhi, the Air Traffic Controllers (ATCOs) are unable to obtain a mandatory 30-minute break after every two hours due to manpower constraints, and at airports such as Guwahati, they work 365 days a year. We do. without a day off. Women employees have also been denied childcare leave due to shortage of staff.
The sanctioned strength of ATCOs in the country is 3,901, against which only 3,162 employees are employed – a decrease of 19%. This gap is only getting wider. Those parts of the discussion within the Airports Authority of India (AAI) say that many unused airports are being revived under UDAN (or regional connectivity scheme) into tier-2 and tier-3 airports and such as Jewar and Bhogapuram. The development of new airports is another conjecture. There is an urgent need to hire 300 to 500 ATCOs.
To deal with the shortage, ATCOs at many airports have to work extra hours. Last month, AAI sought exemption from the DGCA (Directorate General of Civil Aviation) from implementing mandatory shift timings for the third time in the last one year, which was to come into effect from November 5, 2020. It was a part. About the improvements made to ATCO’s license in 2018 following a safety audit by the UN aviation watchdog International Civil Aviation Organization in 2018.
“In view of the prevailing COVID-19 situation with safeguards and to maintain availability, relaxation for six months has been given” [of personnel]A senior DGCA official said, Hindu, Its last exemption ended on 12 January 2022.
duty period
The DGCA’s “Watch Duty Time Limitation” for ATC personnel requires that a duty period should not exceed 12 hours. The total duty period should also not exceed 45 hours in six days and 200 hours in 30 days. When a person works on night duty, he must get 48 hours of rest. While on duty, ATCOs should not work for more than two hours, after which they should work with 30 minutes of rest.
In Delhi, one of the busiest airports in the country, ATCOs do not get the mandatory 30-minute break after two hours for night duty. This break is instead given after four hours.
An ATC guild member said on the condition that at many airports like Guwahati, ATCOs do not get a rest period of 48 hours after their night shift, giving them a day off to work throughout the year. Oblivion. There were similar problems at airports like Ahmedabad, where there were not enough rated controllers, he said. Overtime is also considered a problem at airports like Jaipur, Calicut, Tiruchi and Kochi.
A senior official handling the airport operations said, “With new airports coming up in the country, the time to hire is now, as onboarding them takes around 2 to 2.5 years. This includes written examination, Includes simulator training, on-the-job training.”
“We cannot have uniform rules for the entire country. These must vary from airport to airport. Low traffic airports like Shimla may not have the same requirements as airports like Delhi and Mumbai, where personnel are highly Tension ensues as a senior government official admitted that he had to make some changes in order to cope with the staff shortage.
‘No recruitment in two years’
Another official said there is a need for a “significantly more” number of ATC personnel at the Delhi airport. Today it has 385 ATCOs. It turns out that while it was recommended that 300 ATC personnel should be hired annually, no recruitment had taken place in the last two years.
The matter was taken up by the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Transport, Tourism and Culture, which on Wednesday submitted the action taken report of the government and its recommendation thereon.
In its response, the Civil Aviation Ministry said that it was in the process of hiring 519 ATCOs and expected to complete the process by March 31, 2022. The panel expressed its “serious concern” that these vacancies should be filled up immediately. It had said that ATCO’s huge vacancies “will adversely affect work production by putting them under extreme stress, thereby compromising the safety of flight operations.”
This is also one of the reasons why AAI is unable to provide childcare leave to its female ATCOs. The ministry told the panel that a committee consisting of the AAI’s chairman and all its board members deliberated twice on the matter and decided that childcare leave cannot be provided due to “operational necessity”.
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