PIA sell-off

Fleeting moments

Were a competition held to determine which of the state-owned enterprises (SOEs) were bigger loss-makers, Pakistan International Airlines and the Pakistan Steel Mills would top the list.

Being a public service organisation, PIA attracts more public attention than does the PSM. That’s not to say there aren’t other black holes that gobble up public money year after year but PIA stands unrivalled. So far, it has successfully evaded the chopping block. But will it survive now?

PIA has been in the news for years, mostly for reasons that no airline anywhere would begrudge it. Last October, its pilots went on a strike, which resulted in the cancellation of many flights. Palpa, the PIA pilots’ association, and the airline’s management blamed each other for the standoff. Fourteen pilots reported sick in one day, leaving passengers helplessly stranded. How could so many highly paid and pampered pilots fall sick in one day?

The airline, with only 35 planes but 15,000 employees, has a dismal record of flights’ departure and arrival schedules. Flights are mostly late.

The Korean bus company that operates its fleet of buses from one end of the country to the other has taken away most of the domestic passenger load from PIA. The record of arrival and departure of the buses is envious and its service efficient to a fault.

Whenever we talk about PIA and its sloppy service, the discussion goes right back to the good old times when the airline was the pride of the country and its experts helped set up airlines of the Gulf States. Whatever the PIA was then, it’s no more that now. It is terminally sick and needs surgery. And the only surgery to cure it is privatisation. PTCL went through something similar some years ago. After PTCL was privatised by 26 percent of its shares being sold off to a strategic investor along with its management, the performance of the organisation improved tremendously. It’s staff is responsive and landlines mostly remain in order now.

Conceptually, it’s inadvisable for any government to do business. More so in our country where the practice of cronyism and favouritism is rampant. The PPP has already moved a bill in the Senate to reverse the decision of converting PIA into a company for privatisation purposes. Not only the PPP, some other political parties, like the JI and PTI, are protesting against the privatisation of PIA as well. Imran Khan has even raised the point that if his cancer hospital can run efficiently why not PIA. Imran’s argument is most lopsided – as usual.

The PPP is against PIA privatisation because the inducted the highest number of employees in the airline during its time in power; Imran opposes privatisation merely to oppose the government, the JI is neither here nor there. (The JI is usually a passenger that rides the bandwagon of some other political party to carve a place for itself).

Any state entity that cannot stand on its own and needs a financial boost from time must be sold out. PIA has accumulated a staggering loss of Rs200 billion in the last few years. It would be unwise to bail it out. Why inject good public money into a failing state entity to give it temporary relief only for it to bottom out again? Haven’t we experienced enough in the last many years? Have we not seen how PIA and, for that matter, the PSM devoured billions of public funds and yet remained on the brink of liquidation?

Our SOEs are festering sores. The sooner we get rid of them the better. The nation only hopes the privatisation process is transparent.

The writer is a freelance columnist based in Lahore. Email: pinecity@gmail.com