A committee probing the issue of some 262 commercial pilots, potentially holding fake or dubious licences, has completed its investigation, according to a report in this newspaper. While clearing 180 pilots, the probe concluded that 82 pilots held fake licences. It recommended cancellation of licences of 50 pilots and said 22 of them could face further investigation subject to approval from the federal cabinet. Besides, commercial pilot licences and private pilot licences of 32 bearers have been suspended for a year.
The investigation and its findings came in the wake of the May 22 plane crash in Karachi that resulted in the loss of nearly one hundred lives – in what may have been the consequences of the grant of fake licences. To make it worse, since the fake licence scandal arose in June, Pakistani airlines have been banned from flying to most parts of the developed world. The fact that the flying ban came in the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic, with thousands of overseas migrant workers scrambling back to the safety of home, just scratches the surface of the problem the issue has created.
The national flag carrier – which represents the country the world over and could have potentially played the crucial role of an ‘Emirates’ in Pakistan’s push towards promoting tourism – accounted for nearly half of all pilots who were scrutinised under the probe. Such a blighted reputation will require serious and broad efforts to overturn on the global stage.
While it is important to penalise the pilots who willfully participated in the corrupted system, it remains to be seen whether the inquiry committee, and indeed the government, will move to root out those in the system who sabotaged it just for the sake of a few bucks, putting the lives of a large number of air travellers in peril.
One element that boggles the mind is: why, in 2020, do we rely on inefficient and at times paper-based evaluation systems when technologies such as Artificial Intelligence and Blockchain are being used the world over and when hyper-realistic simulators are so readily available? The only answer is ‘will’ – the element which lies outside of the system. What committee will probe whether it is our will that has been corrupted?
Published in The Express Tribune, September 19th, 2020.
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