Airwaves

FAST stresses on aviation infrastructure development

Jyoti Koul - New Delhi

The boom in the Indian aviation sector is evoking a lot of concern due to inadequate infrastructure. The Foundation for Aviation and Sustainable Tourism (FAST) is, therefore, stressing on it. In an exclusive with Express TravelWorld, Gurcharan Bhatura, director of FAST, said, "The burning issue right now is about infrastructure. There is shortage of manpower, especially pilots and engineers and a firm effort is needed to meet the growing market demand." As a representative of the Kaw committee, its immediate focus is to review the role and procedures of the directorate of civil aviation.

FAST believes that it has an instrumental role to play to identify the problems of the industry and place them before the government for consideration and possible solutions. In this regard, the association also organised a seminar on 'Present Trends, Future Challenges - How prepared are we?' in the capital recently. The event was sponsored by MakeMyTrip.com. Rajiv Talwar, additional director general of tourism, while addressing the gathering, highlighted some tourism related issues and said that domestic tourism needs immediate attention since it serves as the foundation for international tourism.

Talwar mentioned that in order to cope with the growing tourist traffic, issues like faster development of airport infrastructure, augmenting visa issuing capacities of Indian missions, arranging for visa on arrival, issuing long term visas and electronic visa will be taken up immediately.

He also revealed that the ministry is aiming for 15 million tourists in the next five years. Therefore, besides internal and the external coordination, good infrastructure is also required. He suggested that different ministries work together and take a cue from other destinations of the world and adopt successful tourism practices. He added that public and private partnership is required in order to achieve this target.