Understaffed DGCA to get manpower

New Delhi: A week after TOI highlighted how the Directorate-General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has seen its staff strength halve from 909 in past eight years, even as air traffic has grown several fold, the government has launched an exercise to strengthen the regulatory body to buttress flight safety.
At the inauguration of the aviation safety week, aviation minister Praful Patel admitted that the government was concerned at the lack of manpower in the directorate and "that steps were being taken to address this issue."
Last Saturday, senior aviation ministry bureaucrats had a day-long meeting with DGCA officials to estimate the manpower requirement to ensure that both setting of safety standards, and ensuring their compliance, does not suffer with the unprecedented passenger traffic growth rate of 35 to 40 %.
"In a recently-held inter-ministerial screening committee meet headed by aviation secretary Ashok Chawla, the freeze on filling 66 posts has been lifted. While 21 are senior most A group posts, the rest are junior rung officials," said a senior official.
The aviation ministry now wants to complete the estimation of DGCA strength required in wake of the unprecedented traffic growth this year itself. Its challenge is two fold — fill existing vacancies and create new posts and find people for them.
11/12/07 Saurabh Sinha/Times of India

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Categories: General Aviation Dec 2007