PIA needs to weed out all those employees appointed irregularly during the years between 2008 and 2012
DUBAI: The decision by PIA to opt for a code-sharing agreement with Etihad Airways is a step in the right direction, provided the airline takes immediate measures to eliminate cartels formed by a few travel agents and instead, go for open sales through online booking, bypassing middlemen and passing on the benefit of commissions directly to the customer. This will prevent the large-scale pilferage of revenues and imposition of heavy fines that PIA was forced to pay to travel agents for one-sided agreements signed exclusively to benefit a select group of UK-based travel agents by corrupt members of the previous management of the airline. All such cartels existing in Europe, America, the Far East and other areas need to be eliminated.
Grounding of new aircraft like the Boeing 777 because of faulty deals for procurement of technical spares, where instead of choosing from numerous aircraft manufacturer-recommended vendors located along the network, PIA, under its former management, chose a single vendor based in the UAE. This increased the cost of maintenance and led to long delays and disruption of schedules. Mere induction of new aircraft, without a thorough in-house surgical cleansing of the corrupt mafia within its procurement, marketing, corporate planning, engineering, flight operations and finance departments, would only result in investing good money on projects destined to flop.
PIA needs to weed out all those employees appointed irregularly during the years between 2008 and 2012, including those involved in financial and administrative irregularities, and those who submitted fake degrees, birth certificates, and domiciles. This can help restore discipline in the organisation.
Rahat Siddiqi
Published in The Express Tribune, August 7th, 2015.
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