CAA carries on as a headless body

Authority dispels impression that newly appointed PIA MD is also heading CAA.

KARACHI: The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) Pakistan has dispelled the impression that Nadeem Khan Yousufzai is still heading the organisation and said that the post of the director general (DG) remains vacant.

Yousufzai was the CAA DG when he was posted to Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) as the new managing director (MD) after the recent fiasco at the airline which led to the ouster of former PIA MD Aijaz Haroon.

Confusion loomed at the CAA headquarters in Karachi about who headed the organisation since the notification of Yousufzai’s appointment as PIA MD from the Ministry of Defence did not mention whether he had relinquished his charge at CAA.

CAA officials, on condition of anonymity, said uncertainty had engulfed the entire organisation since no clarification had been given to employees even at senior positions whether Yousufzai was still in charge or not.

“The government needs to quickly appoint someone competent as our work is getting seriously affected with the continued delay,” one senior CAA official said.

However, CAA Deputy Director General Air Vice Marshal Riazul Haq told The Express Tribune that “when Yousufzai was appointed PIA MD, it automatically implied that he had relinquished charge at CAA.”

Haq said he was now the acting DG. He agreed that an air of uncertainty had filled the organisation and work was being impeded by the absence of a full-time DG. “But it is for the government to decide quickly who will be the next chief,” he said, adding that he did not even know whether a summary for the new appointment was being moved from the Ministry of Defence to the Prime Minister’s Secretariat for approval.

Haq denied that he was in the race for the top slot of the organisation. No official from the CAA has ever headed the organisation. CAA has been headed mostly by senior officials of Pakistan Air Force (PAF) since its inception in 1982.

Pilot Yousufzai was the first official from PIA to be handed over charge of CAA in September 2010. Other outsiders include Farooq Rehmatullah who was working at a senior post in Shell before becoming DG in 2006. Ameenullah Chaudhry, a civil services bureaucrat, headed the authority in 1998 while Khalil Ahmed was a customs officer when he took over in mid-90s.

When asked who they would want to head their organisation, CAA officials were unanimous in their opposition to someone from PIA. “Either someone from the bureaucracy or PAF should be appointed on merit,” an official said.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 24^th, 2011.