Airport authority of India gets it’s first woman firefighter

Airport authority of India gets it’s first woman firefighter

The Airports Authority of India (AAI) has appointed its first woman firefighter. Taniya Sanyal, who belongs from Kolkata, is undergoing training in the national capital. She will be joining the other firefighters in a month. Till now, the aviation authority did not have any woman in its firefighter team.
As reported in TOI, the aviation authority currently has 3,310 firefighters at its airports. AAI chairman, Guruprasad Mohapatra, said that we will be hiring more women firefighters in future too. Before hiring woman firefighter we did some changes in the existing rules. And after setting standards for recruiting women, hiring was done.

There is a shortage of firefighters at the airports. And with more airports coming up, more firefighters will be needed. Firefighters are mandatory for every airport.

Talking about her journey Sanyal said that she is very happy. She always wanted to do something challenging and firefighting is making her dream come true.

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The physical standards for male firefighters include having a height of about 1.6 meters and at least 50 kg as weight. And women firefighters should have a minimum weight of 40 kg. There were no changes made in their work description.

After completing training Taniya Sanyal will be appointed for AAI’s eastern region airports that include Kolkata, Patna, Bhubaneswar, Raipur, Gaya, and Ranchi.

Recently, Flying Officer Avani Chaturvedi scripted history by becoming the first Indian woman to fly a fighter aircraft solo — Russian made MiG-21 Bison. In October 2015 government took the decision to open the fighter stream for women too. Meanwhile, combat roles in the Army and the Navy still don’t allow women, due to a combination of operational concerns and logistical constraints.

It was only in 1992 that the armed forces began recruiting women to streams, other than the Medical stream. Countries like Britain, the United States, Israel, and Pakistan, have allowed women in the role of fighter pilots.