CISF cutting focus on soft skills to make airports more secure

The next time you are at an airport in the country, you might notice a change in the way the CISF personnel welcome you.

The force responsible for airport security across the country has asked its personnel not to be over-friendly with passengers as it shifts from a 'broad smile' concept to a more disciplined and 'sufficient smile' theory to welcome travellers so that it can focus more on further improving their security, two top officials said Monday.

"From broad smiles, we are now coming to a sufficient smile system as focussing on the core area of ensuring fool proof security is more important," said the force's Additional DG and chief of aviation security M A Ganapathy when asked about imparting soft skills to CISF personnel for better interaction with passengers.

He was briefing reporters about 2-day 'international aviation security seminar' beginning here from Tuesday.

CISF Director General (DG) Rajesh Ranjan echoed his views and said an over-stress on just enhancing soft skills of the airport security personnel had its own pitfalls.

"We cannot be over-friendly with the passengers because one of the reasons cited as to why 9/11 (the 2001 terror attack on twin towers in US) happened...was excessive reliance on passenger-friendly features where security personnel went out of the way to ensure that the passenger is facilitated, thereby compromising on security," the DG said.

"So, friendly smiles are good but focus should be on the core duties (of security) that we perform at the airports as also rightly pointed out by the ADG," he said.

Also, the behaviour and discipline of CISF personnel have been analysed by many agencies, he said, "and I can say that we shine above the world in this domain."