Civil Aviation Ministry pulled up for failure to revive HCI

A parliamentary panel today pulled up the Civil Aviation Ministry for its failure to revive Air India's ailing subsidiary HCI, which runs Centaur brand of hotels, and urged it to explore the possibility of handing over these hotels to Culture and Tourism Ministry.
The Committee on Petitions, headed by BJP MP, Bhagat Singh Koshyari, in its seventh report said that "in case the Ministry of Civil Aviation is not able to shed its inertia in the much-needed efforts towards the revival of Centaur Hotel/Hotel Corporation of India (HCI) and have conceded that running the hotels in the present times is not their expertise.

"The Committee feel that the entire fleet of hotels under their administrative control could be handed over to the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, in view of the fact that they have professional experience and expertise of successfully running the Ashoka Group of Hotels. "
The committee, therefore recommend the Civil Aviation Ministry to explore the possibility of handing over the hotels to the Ministry of Culture and Tourism or running them in some form of collaboration with them for transforming them to profit-making ventures, especially keeping in view the overall welfare of the employees, it said.
"The committee are constrained to note that that the Government has not formulated any result-oriented turn around plan for these subsidiaries (HCI and air-catering unit Chefair), perhaps, acknowledging that no action plan will now be effective for its revival in terms of financial health of the company as well as the welfare of its employees," it said in the report.

The Committee called for a two-pronged strategy by the government - infusing the desired level of funds and looking into the genuine welfare needs of the employees including a hike in their wages - adding that if such a strategy is adopted the revival of the company can become a reality at the shortest possible time.
The Parliamentary panel also suggested the Ministry to increase the share of flight kitchen business of Chefair to make the company gear up the infrastructure and better cash flow.
"The Committee also stress that the management of Chefair should also work out modalities to diversify their business on the lines of the Railways catering by providing similar services to various other government organisation in metropolitan cities to augment their revenue," it said.