Report by Kamgar Ekta Committee correspondent
The government has announced the plan to privatize another 11 airports using the public-private partnership model. The airports to be privatized have been divided into five packages consisting of Amritsar-Kangra (Gaggal), Varanasi-Gaya-Kushinagar, Bhubaneswar-Hubballi, Raipur-Aurangabad and Tiruchirappalli-Tirupati.
The Airports Authority of India (AAI) has spent thousands of crores of public tax money to build and upgrade airports like Amritsar, Varanasi, and Bhubaneswar. For example, the AAI budgeted Rs 2870 core for the modernization of the airport at Varanasi. Once these airports are modernized and ready to generate revenue, they are being handed over to private corporations on massive 50-year leases.
The government had earlier privatized six AAI airports under the PPP model in 2018-19.
Country’s major busy airports at Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Kochi had already been privatised prior that.
For the new round of privatization of airports, the government has proposed a one-year joint-management period with existing Airports Authority of India (AAI) employees after the airports are handed over.
The privatization has been made attractive for private players by putting the condition that the private player would be required to retain 60% of AAI employees for up to three years. This means that 40% of workers will lose their jobs soon after privatization and the rest will have no job security after next three years.