Help or harass at Calcutta airport

The Airports Authority of India (AAI) has received several complaints from fliers about harassment by trolley-pushers at Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose International Airport.
Recently, two passengers from Bangkok, who had flown in on Thai Airways, complained to the airport manager about the problem.
The contractor who operates the trolleys employs the trolley-pushers. Their job is to retrieve the trolleys from outside the terminal building, where the passengers leave them, said an AAI official.
But they crowd around the conveyor belt, along with Group D employees of AAI, each time a flight lands and offer to help fliers for a fee.
What aggravates the problem is that the few trolleys available are captured by the trolley-pushers. Officially, there are 2,100 trolleys in the two terminals but many of them are unusable because of lack of maintenance. Passengers are, thus, forced to lug their bags to the check-in counters.
The airlines, too, took up the issue with the authorities at the last meeting of the airport facilitation committee.
Airport sources said there are more cases of harassment in the international terminal than in the domestic terminal.
08/10/07 Sanjay Mandal/The Telegraph

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Categories: Airports Oct 2007