its accounts through cheques advice clearly stating what the money is for. Also, APTA has letters which show that the PIA has been writing to sales agents from time to time offering more incentives in order to increase sales, including two tickets to those agents who earned over a million pounds business every year.
According to the PITA, since Captain Mohammad Aijaz Haroon took over as the PIA boss, relations between the two has really worsened as Haroon has been accused of breaking promises made to the sales agents.
He held a meeting with APTA members on 22nd of June 2008 in Manchester and promised that the airliner will not allow more than 43 agents to operate under its umbrella, but asked the agents to produce revenue of £110 million per annum. The PIA boss promised that he will get the agreement signed by the PIA’s director marketing, but despite taking the signatures of the APTA executive, he, according to the APTA officials, never returned the signed agreement.
The APTA officials believe he balked under pressure from the army of PIA managers who have their vested interests in keeping the PIA operations the way they are at the moment.
Riaz Syed added: “All managers were against it because the new deal minimised the powers of managers. They were all upset about it and as a result they forced Aijaz Haroon to tear the agreement in public in Manchester when questioned by a member of the APTA. The agreement didn’t even materialise”.
Mehboob Ahmed, the chief executive of APTA, pointed to the wider problem of corruption in the PIA and urged the government of Pakistan to cut to size the number of 28 Pakistan-based staff working in the UK to make the airliner efficient.
“Just in order to skim off benefits from the airliner and to eat up commissions at different levels, the PIA has been divided into North and South zones. Each employee costs the airline between £40,000-£50,000 while most of the work can be done be less than half this number using Internet facility.”
The decision to go to the court has been taken, both Syed and Ahmed said, after failing to engage PIA bosses in any meaningful conversation.
“We will not expect any incentive from the PIA in future but we will go to any level of court to get our due right and will not let PIA hide behind the veil of secrecy and deceits,” APTA leaders resolved.
Captain Mohammad Aijaz Haroon, the airliner’s Managing Director, told The News in a telephone conversation that PIA was fully prepared to contest the case of APTA members and was hopeful of a victory in the court of law. The PIA MD said: “We are more than happy to face the legal challenge in the court and we will sort hem out”.
Haroon didn’t want to speak much about this case as ‘it may prejudice the court case’ but added that sales agents overall in the country were satisfied and on good terms with PIA.
The changes that we have introduced have been positive and we are going to cross £100 million sales this year from the UK which is one of our top three most lucrative centres, he said, adding the court would decide the difference between an agreement and any incentive scheme launched by the companies.
Without specifying who he meant but Haroon said: “Previously, a particular group was holding matters in its hands and sales remained around £70 million a year which will change to over £100 million this year. A handful of people want everything for themselves and that’s not on.”