The great fall

The caretaker PM has called for the privatization of the beleaguered PIA to be completed on a fast-track basis. The fall of the state carrier does not come as a surprise. There is now no hope left of the airline recovering on its own. The injection of emergency funds every now and again will not save PIA in the long-run. The conditions of other SOEs are not too different and their eventual fate will not be too dissimilar from PIA’s. Look at Pakistan Steel Mills, which has been closed for the past eight years or the DISCOs that generate billions of losses each year or Pakistan Railways which subsists on the government’s largesse and is no longer considered to be, by many, a safe mode of travel.

The list of failures is endless. The fate of these organizations mirrors the all-round regression in our governance. The state appears dysfunctional, administration confused and paralyzed and no one in authority appears ready to take ownership of our problems.

Arif Majeed

Karachi