Air India ran thousands of ‘rescue’ missions during the lock down forced by Corona. It ferried thousands of people back from foreign shores back to India as they had got stuck, lost jobs, had expired / expiring visas, had run out of money.
All these flights were operated by our national carrier ‘Air-India’ under a scheme called ‘Vande-Bharat Mission’. The staff of Air-India worked in highly dangerous and infectious conditions to run these services. They wore personal protection for hours at their personal discomfort.
Government of India first promised that ‘social distancing’ would be maintained in these flights but this was never done. All flights came full with no empty seats. Also, these flights were told to the people at large, to be free but passengers were charged full fare and more (in the name of social distancing). The governments abroad were told or rather lied that these were free-flights on rescue mission to avoid paying levies at their airports.
When some countries discovered that these were not free flights, Air India had to suffer the consequences of flights being denied landing on some airports.
Then the mission got over.
As everybody, even a small child in India knows, that Air India is a loss making PSU. Thus once the mission was over, the Civil Aviation Ministry went in for cost cutting. It sent almost 5000 people on leave without pay for FIVE years.
Not only that, to add insult to injury, it cut the salaries across board with retrospective effect ranging from 10% to 50%, even for the work already done.
The unions are up in arms but as usual, Government has gone into deaf mode. It can’t hear anything.
The executive (senior most) pilots wrote this to the chairman Rajiv Bansal opposing the steep cut. “Retrospective action of denying an employee of up to 85% of his/her rightfully earned wages for work already done, which in any case are long overdue. The hourly rate is reduced by 50% and the assured hours are reduced from 70 to 20 hours, ie, 70%. The two combined, amount to an 85% reduction in our current wages. This is for missions flown, which were critical for the nation. On what basis can such gross injustice be explained?” their letter says.
“During the early months (March, April and May 2020) of the pandemic in India, while the country dealt with a nationwide lockdown and most citizens remained safely indoors with their families, we ventured forth to do our bounden duty. We flew to the farthest corners of a world gripped by the deadly and largely unknown virus for the purpose of repatriating, not only our citizens, but citizens of other countries as well…. In these uncertain times, while the virus is still an unknown and dreaded enemy, we continue to expose ourselves and our loved ones to COVID-19, for the sake of our country and its people, and because we firmly believe it is our moral obligation to do so.”
Meanwhile the top management continues to live in luxury and enjoy all perks except some cosmetic trimming as alleged by the Indian Pilots Guild.
It is a case of Pehle Vande, Phir Dande.
