Indian Airports

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Member for

24 years 2 months

Posts: 61

Came across this story and thought it would be of interest to Kabir and others.
Makes interesting / worrying reading!

From Ananova.com;

Indian airports divert fencing and safety money to buy fake plants

Airports across India have reportedly siphoned off £1.7 million, intended for airport fencing and fire safety, to buy plastic potted plants.

The Indian Express says the Airports Authority of India has ordered all airports to replace the real plants in passenger terminals with artificial ones.

India's civil aviation minister Syed Shahnawaz Hussain promised to investigate when presented with the newspaper's findings.

The AAI is concerned real plants have to be watered everyday and are a security risk as gardeners are employed to go into restricted zones to water the plants.

It set up a four-member panel to oversee the purchase of the artificial plants to ensure consistency at all Indian airports.

The panel found it would need 22,134 plants to decorate airports and they would cost around £80 for each plant.

There were no funds left for plants in the current budget, so the panel decided international airports will have to sacrifice money earmarked for boundary walls and domestic airports will have to do without fire tenders.

Justifying the purchase of the potted plants, the AAI said in a resolution: "Plants improve the ambience by adding colour and beauty to the interiors of Passenger Terminal buildings."

India's federal civil aviation minister Syed Shahnawaz Hussain said: "This may be the decision of the board of AAI which is independent.

"I am not aware of it but if you are saying that there is a proposal to divert funds from building of fences, it is a serious matter and I will investigate. There will be no compromise on security."

Original post

Member for

24 years 2 months

Posts: 7,536

Ya, i know the person who wrote that, good on him. But these type of things keep happening so.