By Abhijith Ganapavaram
NEW DELHI (Reuters) -An Indian parliamentary committee on aviation has warned that staffing shortages at the country’s air safety regulator and lack of air traffic controllers pose a threat to safety in one of the world’s fastest growing aviation markets.
The Directorate General of Civil Aviation is grappling “with a profound and persistent shortage of technical and regulatory personnel,” with almost half of its posts unfilled, the committee said in a report on Wednesday.
Lawmakers were reviewing aviation safety in India in the aftermath of the deadly Air India Boeing Dreamliner crash that killed 260 people in June, the world’s worst aviation disaster in a decade.
A few days before the crash, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had addressed an annual global meeting of airlines in New Delhi, underscoring how India is banking on a boom in aviation to support wider development goals.
Staffing shortages at the DGCA were “an existential threat to the integrity of India’s aviation safety system,” said the transport, tourism and culture committee report that also followed several helicopter accidents in northern India.
It said the root of the crisis lay in an outdated recruitment model under which a recruitment agency hires personnel on behalf of the DGCA.
The civil aviation ministry, which houses the regulator, has described the process as “slow and inflexible,” according to the report and the DGCA faces a challenge in attracting and retaining highly skilled professionals.
The ministry and the DGCA did not respond to emailed requests for comment.
Civil aviation minister Ram Mohan Naidu told lawmakers last month that the government would fill up 190 of the more than 500 unfilled positions in the DGCA by October.
The parliamentary committee recommended launching a focused recruitment campaign and suggested a new regulatory authority could be created to replace the DGCA.
The committee also said India’s air traffic controllers were under immense pressure due to staffing shortages caused by failures in workforce planning. Some air traffic controllers were not adequately trained, the committee added.
The report criticised the Airports Authority of India and the DGCA for a “deeply troubling practice” of not following duty time limitations for the controllers, saying that raised the risk of fatigue and increased the chances of a controller error.
(Reporting by Abhijith GanapavaramEditing by Ros Russell)
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