Hyderabad: The Directorate General of Civil
Aviation (DGCA) on Saturday favoured a complete revamp of issuing
license to pilots and called meeting of all flying schools on
Tuesday in a bid to put together an action plan to tackle the
problem of fudging of documents to obtain licenses.
DGCA DG E K Bharat Bhushan said Pradeep Kumar, Assistant
Director of DGCA who was arrested in connection with forging
of marksheets to secure pilot license, had been under the
Authority`s watch for some time.
"We had been watching him (Kumar). In fact, I had him
transferred from the licensing department a month ago. There
had been whispers (about his possible involvement in the scam)
but we did not have proof," Bhushan told reporters here on the
sidelines of GMR Aviation Security Summit aviation here.
He said the DGCA is fully cooperating with the Delhi
police investigating the case.
Bhushan said there should be a "complete revamp" of the
licensing system and DGCA is going to appoint a third party
to scrutinize aviation academies which needed complete
scrutiny.
"Our flying schools also needed complete scrutiny. We
sometimes get the complaint that some of the flying hours
they logged are not genuine," the DGCA said.
He said there is a meeting with all the flying schools
on Tuesday to put together an action plan.
"In fact, I called all the flying schools. We will have a
meeting scheduled for Tuesday where we are put together a
through audit of the schools. We are trying to look at online
solutions and looking at many possibilities. The situation has
to improve a lot," he said.
Bhushan said the fake pilot license issue was serious in
nature but there is no need to panic.
"Our overall safety mechanism is in place. Out of the
4,500 Airline Transport Pilot Licences issued, we have
verified 1700 licences so far (after the scam broke out) and
of these seven turned out to be fake," he said.
On foreign flying schools, Bhushan said the DGCA has
decided not to take the licenses issues by international
schools on the face value.
"Hence forth, we are not going to taking the licenses on
the face value. We will refer back to the institute and seek
information because some people who can fudge the marksheet
can also fudge the license. One has to be careful in
this," he said.
He said that it requires a lot of manpower and with
the present number of employees it is difficult to carry out
all the functions.
"Manpower is a big challenge. The problem which we are
facing in DGCA is the organisation with a huge responsibility
but with limited manpower. We are about 120 and 130 people.
All are taking care of entire safety issues. My predecessor
has got the approval for 520 personnel. But it has not been
achieved," he said.
PTI
