PALPA cries foul over ‘mistreatment’
The Pakistan Airline Pilots’ Association (Palpa) announced on Tuesday that its members will no longer sign a form, which forces them to disclose the amount of foreign currency they bring into the country.
The move comes after Palpa President Captain Amir Hashmi – along with other PIA crew – was ‘detained’ by Pakistan Customs at the Lahore airport on September 21 for allegedly smuggling a dozen mobile phones and foreign currency.
“Let me be clear that no charge has been pressed against us. They didn’t have anything,” Hashmi told a press conference, which was his first since winning elections earlier this year. “No mobile phone was recovered from me.”
The widely reported incident led to protests by PIA crew and delay of another international flight. “Even before my bags were completely checked, news channels had broken the news.”
Narrating the incident, Hashmi said that after the flight from London had landed, he was taken aside by Deputy Collector Usman Bajwa and informed that Customs wanted to search the crew on the basis of some information.
“That was a routine matter so we complied. But when my first officer took out between $500 and $1000, Customs raised objections. I stepped in to tell them that there was more money on me. It was not a big deal and their objection was absurd,” he said.
Pilots receive flying allowance from airlines and, like any Pakistani citizen, they are allowed to bring a maximum of $10,000 without declaring, he said.
“But Customs officials used the excuse of Crew Declaration Form to insist that we should tell them how much foreign currency we were bringing. Why should we when even put together the entire crew had around $5000?”.
The form, based on rules made in 1949-50, specifies declaration of only Pakistani rupees, Hashmi said. “We haven’t broken any rules and Customs officials were aware of this. They just wanted to malign us.”
Published in The Express Tribune, September 24th, 2014.
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