New Delhi: The cabinet
will on Monday consider a proposal by the aviation ministry to create 75
new positions at India’s understaffed aviation regulator, the
Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA).
The proposal was
prepared last week and a special clearance is being taken in the
backdrop of an imminent downgrade by the US’ Federal Aviation
Administration (FAA) of India’s air safety rankings, said an aviation
ministry official who declined to be named.
“We do not want them
(FAA) to take any untoward decision... we have already met 29 of the 31
points mentioned by them,” this official said.
FAA in December
inspected DGCA to determine if it had taken action to correct 31
deficiencies that came to light in a September audit.
An FAA
downgrade of India’s air safety rankings will effectively bar Air India
Ltd and Jet Airways (India) Ltd from increasing flights to the US or
having code-share relationships with any US airline.
DGCA has
been short on staff since early last decade as many staffers retired and
not enough replacements were hired even as airline passenger traffic
grew six times in that period.
FAA mentioned this as one of the
main problems with DGCA, questioning the Indian regulator’s ability to
oversee India’s burgeoning air traffic.
“Once the cabinet clears
this proposal on Monday we will be able to hire professionals from the
market. Then only one point (from the audit) will be left—that is, to
train DGCA officers on various aircraft type like the new Dreamliner,”
the official quoted above said. “That will take time as it needs to be
done over time in batches.”
A second official confirmed DGCA’s efforts to get cabinet approval for its proposal on Monday. He also requested anonymity.
Another
DGCA official, who also declined to be named, said some officials from
private airlines have already started joining and sitting in DGCA
headquarters on year-long dedicated sabbaticals to oversee regulatory
work.
Many trained professionals like pilots, who are paid nearly
six times the salary the highest-ranking DGCA official gets, are
unwilling to join the regulator full time at lower wages.
In
November, the Prime Minister’s Office intervened in the matter, with the
Prime Minister’s principal secretary Pulok Chatterji, foreign secretary
Sujatha Singh, then aviation secretary K.N. Srivastava and other top
civil servants reviewing the issue and deciding on allowing a proposal
through the finance ministry to provide market-based salaries to DGCA
staff, like is done in the case of state-run Air India.
DCGA is
supposed to be replaced with a new Civil Aviation Authority, which is
currently under consideration by the Parliamentary Standing Committee.
But
that proposal is likely to be delayed as “a key concern with the
proposed structure is that the appointments are made by the government
based on the recommendations of a selection committee composed of
bureaucrats... whereas the objective should ideally be to achieve
independent regulation by industry experts”, consulting firm Capa Center
for Aviation said in its January report.
Some aviation experts, however, remain skeptical over the creation of new positions at DGCA.
“If
they have not done anything for 5 years they are not going to do
anything now,” said Mohan Ranganathan, aviation analyst and member of
the government-appointed Civil Aviation Safety Advisory Council. “The
proximity of airlines and business jet operators with the DGCA has grown
too close for comfort over the last few years, raising concerns over
how many safety findings are genuinely found and corrected.”
Source: http://www.livemint.com
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