AAI will recruit people from transgender community: Official

The Airports Authority of India (AAI) has decided to recruit people from the transgender community and those affected by Down Syndrome in airports in northeastern region, a senior AAI official said on Thursday.

AAI has appointed a transgender staff at Guwahati two months back and the agency has now decided to recruit at least one transgender executive at Maharaja Bir Bikram (MBB) Airport here by next month, Regional Executive Director of the AAI (NE), Sanjeev Jindal said.

He said the AAI was undertaking a special initiative to bring in transgenders into the "mainstream of employment ecology".

"As part of our project equality, we are bringing transgenders. We are the first to have employed transgenders at Imphal Airport, we also have the first transgender lawyer in Guwahati and will soon engage at least one executive from transgenders here. We also want to bring equality in engaging men and women", Jindal told a press conference here.

He said that the AAI is creating conducive employment ecology by encouraging third party human resource providers to supply a certain portion of required manpower from transgenders.

Jindal said Swati Bidhan Barua, a transgender lawyer was appointed its counsel in Guwahati in November last year.

The regions first transgender executive, Milan was engaged last year, who is working at a help desk at Imphal airport now.

"We will engage at least one transgender executive to serve at MBB Airport by the end of February this year", Director of MBB Airport VK Seth said.

Apart from transgenders and women, the AAI will also recruit people with Down Syndrome.

The North East region has 12 airports, Jindal said, adding the most sophisticated terminal would come up at MBB airport here in March this year including full-body scanners and other sophisticated devices.

The construction of the new terminal is almost complete, he added.