Elderly passenger Ameer Buksh (right) sits with two other stranded Umrah passengers in the lawn of Airport Hotel on Wednesday. Their flight was cancelled three hours after its scheduled departure. PHOTO: EXPRESS
Over 300 Umrah passengers were stranded at the airport on Wednesday, the second day of the anti-privatisation strike of Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) employees.
The airline has accommodated the passengers at Airport Hotel for free but the passengers have yet to receive updates on their new departure schedule. The hotel staff said that the facility has only 309 rooms and there are over 400 people.
The strike started soon after the federal government imposed the Essential Services (Maintenance) Act, 1952, on PIA for six months. A standoff between the government and the national airline’s employees turned deadly on Tuesday after two protesters were killed after shots were fired at the crowd gathered at Karachi airport, bringing air traffic across the country to near standstill.
The Umrah pilgrims, who were scheduled to fly PK-7303 at 11am on Tuesday, have been stuck at the airport since their flight was cancelled three hours after its scheduled departure. The passengers have yet to access their luggage, which had already been loaded in the aircraft when the flights were called off. Since the ground staff at the airport also joined the protesters on Wednesday, there was no one available to offload their baggage.
Most of the pilgrims had already worn their Ihram (a sacred dress that is part of the state that pilgrims enter before embarking on Umrah) when their flight was delayed. “It is not fair that we have been left here like this,” complained pilgrim Shahid Iqbal, who was upset the officials were not forthcoming with information.
Dr Muhammad Yousuf, who was also travelling for Umrah, felt the government should make an exemption for them as they were embarking on a sacred journey. “It is not possible for children and women to manage without their luggage,” complained another passenger, Abdur Raheem.
The elderly passengers are getting more agitated at the hotel stay and demanded the government put them on a plane as soon as possible. “We don’t want to sit here anymore,” said an old man, Ameer Bakhsh, who came from Muzaffargarh in Punjab. “I was going to perform Umrah for the first time but now I don’t understand anything.”
Muhammad Nasir, a traveller heading to Multan on PIA flight PK-235 from Abu Dhabi, told The Express Tribune that their flight reached Karachi at 5pm for a stopover and it was supposed to depart at 9pm. “The flight was cancelled and we were unable to get our luggage as the ground staff is also on strike,” he said.
Meanwhile, PIA officials were unable to tell when the flights will resume or when the passengers will get their luggage.
Published in The Express Tribune, February 4th, 2016.
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