Havelian plane crash: Victim families urge govt to unveil inquiry report

PESHAWAR: The families who lost their loved ones in the Havelian plane crash have demanded the authorities to announce the inquiry report that has not been made public during the last one year.

The PIA flight PK-661 crashed on December 7, 2016 evening and all the 48 people onboard were killed. The families are also demanding compensation.

Shah Fahad, resident of Chitral who lost his 26-year-old sister Ayesha in the crash, said that the victims had been waiting for the investigation report.

Ehteshamul Haq, brother of 28-year old victim Ehtiralul Haq, vowed to move the court if the investigation report was further delayed. In the country’s history about the plane crashes, the government had only made public two investigation reports on the high courts’ orders, ie Airblue plane crash and Bhoja Airline crash.

The government had made the Airblue plane crash inquiry report public on the direction of the Peshawar High Court (PHC). The inquiry of the Bhoja Airline crash was announced on the order of the Islamabad High Court.

However, an international aviation expert told The News on condition of anonymity that the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) was following the rules of International Civil Aviation Organisation, which has already directed Pakistan to make Safety and Investigation Board (SIB) independent as done already by most of the countries.

However, he stated that till date the government of Pakistan failed to make the SIB a fully independent and autonomous body.

“The SIB is presently running under the CAA ordinance, whereas, administratively, it is under the secretary Ministry of Aviation Division, who is also chairman of CAA board and PIA,” he said. However, the expert stated that SIB would become independent and autonomous when it is placed under the parliament or the chairman of its Public Accounts Committee.

He also questioned implementation of the PHC decision for making the SIB an independent and autonomous body from CAA when it was still under the secretary aviation, who also is a chairman of CAA Board and the SIB president, members and managerial staff also getting salaries from the CAA.

The expert said the government instead of making the SIB an autonomous body through a notification in 2016 brought the SIB under the secretary Aviation Division, who is also chairman Board of CAA and in-charge of PIA and Airport Security Force (ASF).

Furthermore, it was disclosed that the SIB did not have its own investigators to probe the crash as Pakistan Air Force (PAF) investigators are being brought for the probe even though they are not the concerned persons.

The high court had disposed of the writ petition after it was given an assurance by the federal government that a summary spelling out the outlines of a proposed law for the SIB’s autonomy had already been prepared for submission to the prime minister.

However, legal experts said the bill was still pending before a committee of the Senate. Also, no changes have been made in the rules that require the CAA director general to appoint investigators in case of an accident. It said that the bill had not yet been passed by the parliament where it was presented by PPP Senator Faryal Talpur. He said that the Civil Aviation Rules of 1994 had not been amended to make the Safety and Investigation Board independent of the CAA.

A bench of the PHC, headed by then chief justice Dost Muhammad Khan, who is now a Supreme Court judge, had in November 2012 issued a notice to the CAA for explaining the ICAO’s recommendation for declaring the SIB fully autonomous.

In the notice, the bench asked the authorities concerned to explain why the SIB should not be made fully autonomous. In January 2013, the court had again directed the defence ministry to expedite legislation for making the SIB an autonomous body. The government gave an assurance to the court that it had begun implementing the recommendations of the ICAO and had sent a summary to this effect to the prime minister. The summary recommended the conversion of the SIB into an “accident investigation commission” (AIC) in line with the ICAO guidelines.

The issue has been lingering as legislation for setting up the AIC in order to replace the SIB has not been carried out so far.

However, both the Civil Aviation Division’s spokesman and the CAA spokesperson Parvez George said that the SIB is a separate, independent body which works under the federal government. They stated that the board had been separated from the CAA a few years ago and hence could not answer for them.

Mashood Tajwar, a spokesperson for the PIA, had said that the legal heirs of most of the crash victims have been compensated. He added that some cases were in process and others in litigation. He noted that the remaining cases were stalled owing to lack of key documents.