On Sunday an Air India flight with 150 passengers on board returned to Dabolim airport under emergency conditions after the pilot noticed a technical snag. The plane had been airborne some 15 minutes when it turned back. Once on ground engineers inspected the plane and detected a bird-hit that had severely damaged an engine blade. The flight was cancelled and passengers were stranded at the airport till evening when they were flown out by a different plane. While many passengers may have missed connecting flights because of this delay, what is of utmost concern and often gets lost in the whining by the passengers over the delay, is that bird hits can be extremely dangerous and lead to serious accidents.
This is not the first flight to suffer a bird-hit at Dabolim airport and is surely not the last. Bird-hits will continue to be a threat at Dabolim airport as long as there is garbage dumped in the villages in the airport’s neighbourhood. There was a massive scare in November land year when a Delhi-bound flight, again operated by Air India, suffered a bird-hit and a burst tyre as the pilot aborted takeoff. This had happened just a week after Herald had reported extensively on garbage dumps around the airport and the threat these dumps pose to all flights landing and taking off from the international airport at Dabolim. A month before that, on October 20, a Mumbai-Goa flight had been reportedly held up, after stray dogs were found moving on the runway and taxiway.
There is only one reason for stray dogs on an airport runway and birds in the flight path and that is garbage strewn around the airport. Ten months ago, after the bird hit suffered by the Air India flight, the airport director had called on the district authorities to convene a meeting to discuss steps to curb the menace of garbage dumping around the airport. Earlier this month, the South Goa district collector had convened a high-level meeting with official of the taluka administration to discuss the issue. At the meeting besides taluka and airport officials, representatives of the Chicalim and Sancoale panchayats were present. Measures were discussed to eliminate garbage dumps in these villages and Sancoale was given up to September 30 to devise a plan of action.
If the State has not been able to find a solution to its garbage problem, does the district administration sincerely expect Sancoale to be able to devise a foolproof action plan on garbage? Or is this just another manner of procrastinating and demonstrating that efforts are being made, but actually none are. At the meeting a major cleanliness drive was also planned for Gandhi Jayanti, but even before this cleanliness drive could take place, another plane suffered a bird-hit, bringing immediacy towards finding a solution to the garbage problem around Dabolim airport.
A year after Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the Swachh Bharat initiative on Gandhi Jayanti last year, even the area around the airport has not been cleared of the illegal garbage dumps. This is a major worry that has to be addressed immediately as people lives are at stake. The issue needs to be tackled not just at the panchayat and district level but with the involvement of officers at the secretary level and even bringing in ministers. The issue is important enough to warrant the immediate intervention of the chief minister, and perhaps even that of the Defence minister as the airport also has naval operations, to find a solution to the menace. The Defence Minister, Manohar Parrikar, being a former chief minister of this State will be only too aware of the peculiar problems that plague this airport, which would place him in an excellent position to contribute towards finding a solution. The next meeting should involve the top officials of the State so that a lasting solution to this problem can be devised, rather than merely short term measures that do nothing towards finding a solution other than buying time.
