Bringing down the planes

The writer is a freelance columnist and former newspaper editor.

It did not take drones or rocket launchers for us to bring the smaller and smaller fleet Pakistan International Airways has been able to keep in flight-worthy condition over the years to the ground. All it took was a few weeks of terrible mismanagement by an arrogant, unthinking government which often seems unwilling to accept it could have made a mistake.

Such arrogance is always dangerous. It is especially dangerous when it is displayed over and over again by those who run the affairs of the country.

It is quite obvious that any attempts to privatise PIA, as per the IMF demand, would lead to trouble. Yes, we are bound by intense fiscal constraints which forced us to accept the IMF brutal conditions. But even so we need to think of our country, its people and its institutions first of all. The secretive manner in which the law converting PIA into a public limited company was passed behind the back of parliament and through a signature by the president was the first mistake. Parliament has acted sensibly and offered up valuable suggestions in the past, as during the crisis involving Saudi Arabia and Yemen. At the time all parties stood for national interest. They should have been allowed to do so in the case of PIA as well.

The national airline is not just any company. Since it was set up as the national carrier in 1955 it has acted as a source of pride for the nation. Until the 1970s it ranked among the best airlines of Asia and was known to have trained pilots who went on to act as master trainers for other airlines which have since swept past PIA up the ladder of success.

Today, the airline stands depleted of its best staff members who have linked up with other airlines and have been allowed to sink into a state of decay by successive governments who used it for political purposes and to accommodate personnel they chose to favour. This was in many ways the beginning of the downfall.

But even so, nations cannot simply give up on something that belongs to them – which carries the colours of the country and represents it in so many different ways. As the opposition has suggested an attempt was needed, ideally many years ago, to rescue PIA. Yes this would have been a mammoth task. There are many things that have gone wrong with the airline, as its planes fall apart and staffing problems mean over 300 employees are engaged to work on each plane as against the international average of around a 100. Corruption, mismanagement, neglect and inept administration further aggravated the problems. This is also true of many other national institutions.

The solution, though, can never lie in simply selling off something that has gone bad in the hope that it would bring in revenue and get rid of the problem at the same time. The clumsy fashion in which the matter was handled only made things worse. We still do not know who shot the two PIA workers who died during a protest in Karachi. But we do know that an attempt had been made to prevent them from exercising their constitutional right to agitate peacefully with the use of water cannons, teargas and batons. This action in itself closed the doors for talks. The imposition of the Essential Services Act took this further.

Those who lead our country, rather like spoilt children, need to learn they cannot always have their own way. There is sometimes a desperate need to give in to others and to negotiate settlements rather than to push through preconceived plans. The refusal to accept any wrong is simply aggravating matters. The announcement by the interior minister that a new airline would be set up did not exactly appease the thousands of PIA workers protesting.

Such statements and policies simply show a government that is unwilling to hear other voices. The same applies in the case of the insensitive statement made by the information minister who suggested that the PIA workers may have orchestrated their own shootings. In a situation where we needed calm, some humility and a readiness to accept the fears of PIA’s workers who looked at the possibility of joblessness in very hard times we saw just the opposite. As a consequence, for now even as deals have been worked out, it is passengers who faced hard times as fares were pushed up and an apparently helpless government watched on.

The question of what should be done now is a difficult one to answer. Too much trouble has been created; too much unnecessary unpleasantness has been caused. The government should have recognised it needed to proceed far more slowly. Yes, amending the affairs of PIA – given the mess that had been created – would never have been easy. But some attempt should have been made to clear up this chaos. After all, tasks just as difficult were achieved when Sheikh Rashid Ahmad was able to – during the Musharraf era – turn around the fate of Pakistan Railways at least for a short period of time. The fact that this institution, which has so much potential given the vast network of tracks which run across the country, was once more allowed to fall into ruin is a further tragedy. Khawaja Saad Rafique has renewed efforts to put it back on track. How far his efforts work will be known in a year or two.

The key problem is the unwillingness of government to divert from the path it has chosen, in some cases without following the rules of democracy. In the case of PIA all political parties needed to have been involved. This is especially true given the highly politicised nature of PIA’s powerful labour unions. Only with the assistance of parties could a remedy have been found.

As we watched the pandemonium at airports from which no PIA flights were taking off and people attempting to scramble aboard private carriers of varying quality or the airlines of other countries we could only think back to those days when PIA was a symbol of national pride. Model airplanes were kept on shelves by children around the country. According to those who run the marketing affairs of a once powerful entity, no one buys the same substandard models still sold by the airline aboard its planes. Perhaps passengers are simply grateful they get to their destination and cannot be bothered to attend to other niceties.

The glory days of PIA ended a long time ago. Various efforts to resolve its problems worked for short periods but we now need a long-term fix – something that will calm the turmoil within an airline whose employees turn up for work, mark attendance and then join the sit-ins at hallways and offices. Things should never have been allowed to reach this point. This is a situation that is becoming harder and harder to deal with. The politicians are not helping either; the failure to consult them before makes it less likely that they will do so now. And we wonder if PIA planes will continue to soar into the skies the same way they did for so many decades of Pakistan’s existence.

Email: kamilahyat@hotmail.com