SIALKOT: Billions of rupees of funding or credits provided to PIA on sovereign guarantees will go down the drain if the airline is not purged of its black sheep. The airline has to be restored to a service-oriented entity, instead of an organisation used to provide employment to unqualified children of the ruling civil and military elite or of its employees.
In the past four years alone, the airline has lost almost Rs100 billion. The sad irony is that PIA used to make a lot of money in the past but that unfortunately attracted successive governments to use it as a till to further their own personal benefit agendas. This is an airline where the management’s priority is not to first seek spares of grounded aircraft, which would cost millions, but rather to seek the purchase/lease of new aircraft, which would cost far more.
Its sole surviving assets, namely human resources and its routes, stand compromised because of surplus recruitment done usually in violation of merit. Airlines all over the world hire 14 to 16 pilots per aircraft, while PIA has over 26 for its fleet of 40 aircraft (and the reality is that around 30 are operational).
Recently, the airline announced that it had terminated services of six pilots who had submitted fake matriculation or intermediate degrees at the time of induction. The fact is that five of them resigned with full benefits and their licences were validated by CAA, since none of them faced any criminal charge. Furthermore, there are other staffers who continue to be on the payroll despite having submitted suspect documents like fake domiciles and degrees from fake universities.
Shahzad Khalil
Published in The Express Tribune, December 27th, 2012.
