PPP activist’s death disrupts dozens of PIA flights

Staff goes on strike in protest; DIG Sindh to head inquiry.

KARACHI: Up to 44 flights of the Pakistan International Airlines (PIA), both domestic and international-bound traffic, were disrupted on Sunday at the three major airports of the country in the aftermath of the murder of two senior Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) activists in Karachi a day earlier.

Senior PPP activist Aamir Shah, who was also the president of an employees’ union body at the PIA head office in Karachi, was shot dead along with another PPP worker Mairaj Khalid Jagirani by unidentified gunmen in Gulistan-e-Jauhar on Saturday evening. Immediately after the incident, several neighbourhoods of the city erupted with gunfire with at least one passenger bus being set ablaze in Gulshan-e-Iqbal, and flights at the Jinnah International Airport also began to be affected severely.

PIA spokesperson Anisa Rehman said that since the incident on Saturday, more than 44 PIA flights were cancelled at the Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad airports, out of which 27 were domestic and 17 international.  At the Jinnah International Airport, 17 flights were cancelled, including nine international and eight domestic. The international flights that were disrupted included those bound for Dubai, Abu Dhabi, London, Kuala Lumpur, Dhaka and Toronto.

Although the Peoples Unity, one of the union bodies that comes under the Collective Bargaining Agent (CBA), had not announced a strike in the aftermath of the killings, many PIA workers associated with the CBA, either left their workplaces on Saturday night or did not report for work the next day. The staff included the people manning the tickets and boarding counters; and the luggage loading staff.

Investigation

Meanwhile, the Sindh chief minister’s adviser, Waqar Mehdi, said that Qaim Ali Shah had instructed the law and enforcement agencies to make every effort to nab the culprits involved behind Shah’s murder as soon as possible. He said that newly appointed Deputy Inspector General (DIG) East Akram Naeem Brokha had been instructed with the task to launch an inquiry into the act of the ‘political killing’.

Senior Superintendent Police (SSP) East Niaz Khosa said that police was still investigating the facts of the case and no major breakthroughs had been made yet. The First Information Report (FIR) into the incident had been lodged against unknown gunmen at the Gulistan-e-Jauhar Police Station.

Earlier, PIA Managing Director Nadeem Khan Yousufzai condemned Shah’s murder. According to the handout released by PIA, he said that Shah’s name would be written with ‘golden words in PIA history’. Yousufzai, on behalf of PIA, also expressed regret over the inconvenience faced by passengers following the disruption of flights.

Passengers irked

The disruption in flights began at around 9:00 pm on Saturday and till the filing of this report, more PIA flights were either delayed or cancelled.

Rehman, however, insisted that since 4:00 pm after Shah was laid to rest at a graveyard near the Jinnah terminal on Sunday, PIA flights had resumed and that “all check-in counters were working at the moment.”

Anum Mustafa, a Karachi-bound passenger from Lahore, had a different tale to tell. She said that the PIA staff at the Lahore airport was not forthcoming with information and the delay-time was being misreported to all the passengers.

“The flight status of all PIA flights was marked as ‘indefinite delay’ and I came back home,” she complained.

However, the spokesperson said that all information about rescheduling of flights was promptly updated at their official website and the staff were doing their best to cater to the queries of passengers.

(with additional reporting by Asad Kharal in lahore)

Published in The Express Tribune, July 18^th, 2011.