Aviation minister, PPP MNAs exchange barbs on PIA affairs

ISLAMABAD: Minister for Aviation Ghulam Sarwar Khan and the opposition members from Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) Tuesday exchanged allegations in the National Assembly, demanding resignations of each other on the issue of Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) affairs and seizure of its plane in Malaysia.

“You should be ashamed of receiving kickbacks, receiving commission, looting the national exchequer and signing international agreements due to which Pakistan is facing embarrassing situation,” the Aviation minister said while responding to a calling attention notice, raised by the PPP parliamentarians.

The PPP members including Hina Rabbani Khar, Dr Nafeesa Shah, Syed Naveed Qamar and Shagufta Jumani raised the calling attention on government’s failures to meeting international agreements, leading to seizure of the PIA hotels in New York and Paris and its plane in Malaysia.

“If you are so helpless and cannot neither meet international obligations nor save the country from enemies, then you quit the government,” Hina Rabbani Khar said while speaking on calling attention notice.

She also questioned whether the Aviation minister was not aware of international obligations that the PIA plane, along with passengers, was seized in Malaysia which happened for the first time in the country’s history. Dr Nafeesa Shah and Shagufta Jumani also demanded resignation of the Aviation minister for giving a wrong statement with regard to fake degrees of Pakistani pilots, thus hurting country’s image and causing billions of rupees loss to the country.

The minister, however, said it should be the opposition members not the government who should resign for looting the country and wreaking havoc on institutions like the PIA and Pakistan Steel Mills. “We intermitted Rs462 loan on the PIA and poor state of affairs of Steel Mills,” he said.

He pointed out that the PIA plane was brought back with 173 passengers on board from Malaysia after reaching out-of-court settlement with the company concerned. He also mentioned that the government also averted $1.2 billion penalty in Karkey case while dispute in case of Reko Diq would be also be settle out-of-court. The minister said that he took right decisions to get educational credentials of pilots verified, saying now India had also started the process to verify degrees of 4,000 pilots.

The lower house of the parliament also passed “The Pakistan Institute for Parliamentary Services (Amendment) Bill, 2020” on private members’ day to ensure provision of entitlements, facilities and perks to the Pakistan Institute for Parliamentary Services (PIPS) employees as available to the employees of the Senate and National Assembly secretariats.

According to ‘The Pakistan Institute for Parliamentary Services (Amendment) Bill, 2020’ “Subject to the provisions of this Act and rules made hereunder, the employees of the Institute shall be entitled to such perks, entitlements, membership, facilities, including but not limited to housing and all other schemes of the government, as admissible or enjoyed or available to the employees of the Senate and National Assembly Secretariat in the corresponding equivalent scales, notwithstanding any judgment or order of any court, tribunal or a quasi-judicial authority.”