Patna: Divisional commissioner Anand Kishor has accepted the Jayaprakash Narayan International Airport director R.S. Lahauria's demand for more dustbins to remove garbage on the premises and increase security.

Several such measures to tackle environmental problems faced by the airport were discussed at a meeting on Friday chaired by the divisional commissioner. Lahauria made a PowerPoint presentation pointing out problems faced by the airport, such as bird-hits, animal intrusion, garbage management and others. At the meeting, Lahauria said that earlier there were large grasses growing inside the airport premises which used to attract birds but now the grasses have been trimmed. "Grasses are cut regularly to prevent bird nuisance," Lahauria said. "There were a couple of open drains near the airport. Those have now been covered to prevent birds hovering over the premises."

He, however, said that birds coming in the way of flights cannot be completely checked, as it is a worldwide phenomenon but we can definitely contain it.

The meeting was called in view of a few recent bird-hit incidents at Patna airport. In the past month, bird-hit incidents were reported from a SpiceJet and then an IndiGo flight coming to land. Lahauria said that at present 10 bird scarers, two six-shot launchers and seven LPG-operated zone guns help keep birds from coming too close to flights. These LPG-operated guns produce sounds every minute and are stationed near the runway area to help aircraft land and take off.

That apart, crackers are burst occasionally to scare the birds away, he said.

For garbage removal, both collected from the flights and canteens on the airport premises, Lahauria requested the state government to provide 20 more dustbins. Divisional commissioner Anand Kishor accepted the request and announced to provide 20 more dustbins to the airport administration.

Garbage management becomes important as it is mostly eagles and vultures that hit planes during take-off or landing and these birds feed on the open garbagedumped on the airport premises.

Kishor also accepted Lahauria's proposal to provide two more containers to the airport administration to manage the dumped garbage.

As far as animal intrusion is concerned, jackals and stray dogs are a menace for airport security. To prevent animal intrusion, Lahauria said, the airport's outer boundary walls have been deepened while four jackals were recently relocated from the airport premises. He also requested for two more trappers to be provided to the airport administration. Kishor agreed to that too.

Stray dogs were considered an all-India phenomenon but Lahauria admitted that the number of stray dogs had dipped from before. The divisional commissioner then directed for an action plan to relocate stray dogs from the airport premises and tto submit the plan soon. It was also decided to fence the boundary wall.

Another measure discussed during the meet was regular pruning of trees for flight safety and security along with checks on construction of high rises that have come up recently near the airport premises without obtaining no-objection certificate.