I doubt whether any accountability would take place even after the interior minister’s intervention
PESHAWAR: This is with reference to Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan’s press conference about the FIA probing massive corruption in PIA and placing its CEO, Bernd Hildebrand, on the ECL. The bad choice of a German who joined Lufthansa as an apprentice mechanic, and had no worthwhile management experience except working in middle management within a subsidiary, raises questions about the motives of those who selected him to head PIA. Why does every government, from General (retd) Pervez Musharraf to Asif Zardari and now Nawaz Sharif’s, choose to appoint semi-literate controversial persons, whether they be a high school educated PIA pilot or this mechanic or shoe manufacturer, and expect to turn around this ailing white elephant?
From the controversial swap of brand new DC-10 with the aging Boeing jumbo, to the leasing of Russian aircraft for Hajj or Umrah in the 1980s or 1990s, or Boeing and Airbus thereafter, PIA’s successive managements and their corporate planning have always paid between 60 per cent and 90 per cent more cost than the leasing rate by private airlines and other regional operators. It could only have happened in Pakistan that PIA bought Boeing 747-300 from Cathay Pacific without engines, for which the airline was paying separately per hour. Which airline would buy brand new B777 and then choose a blacklisted aircraft seat manufacturer to install seats with defective in-flight entertainment? Should alarm bells not have been raised when in 2005, PIA cancelled manufacturer recommended vendors along its network and appointed a single supplier located in a remote part of the UK only to end up being imposed with a partial ban by the EU in 2007 because of maintenance and safety issues? With no accountability, it only encouraged a corrupt political crony to appoint a single supplier for all spare parts based in Dubai resulting in half of the fleet being grounded. All this happened with approval of the board of directors, some of whom were also on the CAA governing body and aware of the leasing cost of comparative aircraft operated by private airlines. It is common knowledge that even sensitive recruitments, including pilots and engineers, are being made in violation of merit and that nepotism reigns supreme with whole families serving in the airline, compromising flight safety.
I doubt whether any accountability would take place even after the interior minister’s intervention and FIA probe, because it would expose the mafia within the establishment, bureaucracy, the political elite and their cronies within PIA and CAA, who have destroyed this airline.
G Zaman
Published in The Express Tribune, March 18th, 2017.
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