45 dog squads for manning airports soon: DG CISF

New Delhi, Mar 7 (UNI) Forty-five dog squads would soon be set up to lend teeth to security at the nearly 60 airports across the country being looked after by the Central Industrial Security Force.

''While presently 52 airports are already under us, eight others would shortly come to us, and for effective manning of them 45 dog squads have been sanctioned,'' CISF Director General S I S Ahmed told mediapersons.

Constant upgradation of airport security was being carried out in consultation with the Airport Authority of India which includes the bio-metric system, simulators, online baggage checking and the dog squad, he said.

However, the enhanced security measures would not appear to be obtrusive at any point or cause any inconvenience to the passengers despite the involvement of several agencies, the DG said, adding that ''as soon as online baggage system comes into effect, only the CISF would be involved in handling the screening process at airports.'' Besides this, our focus in training personnel to this effect would be on access control and anti-hijacking operations, he added.

''Apart from airports, security at 13 seaports (barring Mumbai) was also being provided by the CISF, to manage bulk transportation, through its International Seaport Security Force (ISSF) wing.'' Talking about the 42 alerts at airports last year, stretched over 42 weeks out of the total 52 weeks, Mr Ahmed said stress management was a critical component of the expanding CISF and the services of professionals like psychiatrists, psychologists and counsellors were being taken to deal with them effectively.

Besides security, we were largely into technical consultancy since 2003 to impart training to government institutions, public sector organisations and joint sector undertakings.

''No such training was presently available for the private sector though last year TISCO took our consultancy services.'' Besides consultancy, the force was also handling the 'Critical Information Infrastructure Security' and the 'Cyber Security' aspect thereby becoming the only government organisation involved in this aspect, he said.

''Also, we were taking care of the fire service requirements of 77 public sector organisations, thereby making ourselves multi-dimensional, which since its inception in 1969 from a 3,000-member contingent was today a 105,000 strong force.'' The aim is to become a tech savvy organisation involved in multi-dimensional activities, he added.

UNI