Palpa appears divided over PIA privatisation

KARACHI: Pakistan Airline Pilots’ Association (Palpa) on Monday appeared divided over supporting the government initiative of privatising the country’s national flag carrier, Pakistan International Airlines (PIA).

Captain Khalid Hamza, Palpa president said the association would only support the privatisation of the airline, “if it is done in a transparent manner.” The statement of the president, however, was strongly negated by other association members, who said that the association would never support any privatisation bid. The association members, including the vice president said that the association’s executive committee had a clear stance against the privatisation process.

The government had made the privatisation of PIA a top goal when it came to power in 2013. However, those plans were abandoned last year after airline’s staff protested against the planned privatization. PIA has accumulated losses of more than $3 billion.

In April 2016, the parliament adopted a law that would convert the cash-strapped PIA into a limited company and also bar the government from giving up its management control. Later the government chalked out a new turnaround strategy.

The association criticised the airline management with regards to delay in the airline employees’ salaries, aviation policy, and taking aircraft on wet lease. Hamza at a news conference saidf the National Aviation Policy 2015 failed to curb the challenges faced by the local aviation industry and to set the ground for the local aviation industry to flourish.

“The new aviation policy has failed to achieve the goals of providing field to the local carriers to grow, (for capacity building), creating more jobs, and getting the national carrier – PIA, out of the crisis,” he said, and added that instead of having an industry-centric approach, the policy leant towards favouring foreign airline companies and attracting foreign organisations.

Unfortunately, he added, the policy document for 2015 has been prepared in isolation and it entails more questions and problems rather than provision of answers and solutions.

“Instead of discussing item-wise specific issues and challenges faced by aviation in Pakistan, the report talks about mundane issues and practices of the industry that are not very relevant to ground realities in Pakistan,” he said.

“The quality of the report suggests that a systematic step-by-step approach necessary for development of such documents, as practiced all over the world, has not been adopted. While developing such studies, it is imperative to initiate discussions with all relevant stakeholders like government/industry/public, and organise seminars and group discussions,” reasoned the captain.

Hamza also demanded an independent inquiry into the ATR plane crash, as engine and propeller of the crashed plan were still in Pakistan, and had not been sent to Canada or France for further investigation. He urged the Supreme Court of Pakistan to take suo moto in this case.

Palpa general secretary captain Rizwan Ahmed expressed concern over inordinate delay and discrepancies in disbursement of the salaries by the national airline.

“The matter pertaining to salary structure is with PIACL Board members, unfortunately, who have yet not as to what is to be done and what not. All these salary anomalies transpired because of some inadequate briefing by directorate of flight operations/hr/finance or probably incorrect minutes of the board meeting proceedings,” said the Palpa general secretary.