Engineers at international airport stop work over incentives

Mumbai, Feb 14 (UNI) A section of the Air India technicians and engineers owning allegiance to Shiv Sena backed Air Service Engineers Association (ASEA) stopped work today demanding parity in productivity linked incentive (PLI) with other aircraft maintainance engineers.

According to working president ASEA Vilas Girdhar, the management has released Rs 59 crore as PLI for the Air Maintainance Engineers (AME), while the ASEA which was due to receive Rs 32 crore has received only Rs 21 crore.

''In this vein of disparity, we have gone on strike and if the management does not accede to our demands, we will not resume work,'' he said.

However Air India spokesperson denied that there was any strike by the engineers at the international airport. ''The work at the airport is going on smoothly and there is no strike at all.

Moreover, our flights are in the night and even then it will not be disrupted'', said the spokesperson.

The ASEA is also agitated over the management signing a PLI agreement with another union- the Air Industry Engineers Union (AIEU) which Mr Girdhar claims is in minority.

UNI IAS DB PDT VC1658