The PIA management is making sure that the airline collapses so that it can be disposed of easily
KARACHI: This refers to a news item in this paper, “PIA still a manageable entity, says former MD” (August 25). There cannot be two opinions about what the former managing director has said. PIA, in the past, has been the pride of Pakistan and was doing roaring business with a small fleet, dedicated manpower and professional management. It started deteriorating due to political interference with employees without the requisite qualifications being hired as a result of which the company virtually turned into an “employment exchange”.
Before going for the option to privatise the national carrier, the government should take into account that PIA’s buyer will only be interested in its assets that run into billions of dollars. The PIA management is making sure that the airline collapses so that it can be disposed of easily under the cover of it being a non-profitable entity. PIA, intentionally, closed high revenue generating routes like Barcelona, Glasgow, Leeds, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Hong Kong, Bangkok, Colombo, Kathmandu and Yanbu Station in Saudi Arabia, which was a high revenue station given to a private company. Can anyone explain why these routes were given to other airlines when they were being effectively managed by PIA? It is worth going through the present state of higher management, where people have been inducted and are being paid millions in salaries, while at the same time the airline is living on relief packages.
It is not only PIA; many of our institutions are overstaffed due to political compulsions and compromises and this will continue in the coming years as this is the style of democracy practised in Pakistan, where the government and the opposition are always on the same page. It is time the prime minister stopped plans to privatise PIA and took the airline’s top management to task.
Mukhtar Ahmed
Published in The Express Tribune, August 27th, 2015.
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