CISF sails through 16 years at the airport

Personnel deal with rude passengers every hour, bust cases of gold, narcotics smuggling

Keeping watch: As many as 5,000 CISF personnel provide security at the two terminals, air traffic control tower, Santa Cruz air cargo terminal and other facilities.

The Central Industrial Security Force’s (CISF) Aviation Security Group (ASG) this week completed 16 years since it was inducted at Mumbai airport and entrusted with the airport’s security in August 2002.

Since then, besides being adjudged the best airport security by the World Airport Conference last year, CISF’s Mumbai ASG has been the only airport unit to deploy an armed all-women commando team, besides busting several cases of narcotics and gold smuggling cases amid various challenges of operating in a city airport.

The CISF has been providing comprehensive security coverage to Mumbai airport with as many as 5,000 of its personnel providing security at both domestic and international terminals, the air traffic control tower, the cargo complex, the Santa Cruz air cargo terminal, airside perimeter wall and city-side approach road towards the terminal building.

Besides these areas of the airport, over 60 armed CISF commandos have also been deployed to provide anti-terror security cover to a five-star luxury hotel, which as a part of the domestic airport terminal gives guests a sweeping view of the airport’s operational area.

“The security functions of the CISF at the Mumbai airport include passenger frisking, hand baggage screening, CCTV surveillance, Quick Reaction Team, anti-hijacking response team, VIP movement handling, among others. Our Mumbai airport unit has also won the Golden Peacock Award for Risk Management, 2017,” a spokesperson said.

Besides organising regular activities involving film stars to keep the morale of its cadre upbeat, the CISF also conducted a mandatory training programme for its security personnel in March, of which two days were reserved for soft skills training to tackle unruly fliers. “By training our staff in ways to effectively deal with passengers using their soft skills, we aim to upgrade ourselves towards passenger facilitation,” K.N. Tripathy, Deputy Inspector General, CISF, International Airport, said.

Passengers tend to get into arguments with CISF staff over security instructions or paper work. “Many passengers seem to have less knowledge of the dos and don’ts while flying, which is one of the major reasons why we see a high number of such disputes,” Mr. Tripathy said. In the course of regular 12-hour duty, CISF personnel said they experience rude and problematic passengers every hour. On an average, CISF officials said they have to deal with three problematic passengers in an hour. “Passengers get aggressive if we ask them to remove a prohibitory item they are carrying. Also, they object to us if we ask them to open their bags for random checks,” an official said.