Sherry questions govt’s business plan for PIA

ISLAMABAD: Parliamentary Leader of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) in the Senate Senator Sherry Rehman Wednesday questioned that government business plan for the Pakistan International Airline (PIA) with splitting a PIA into two firms and said the Parliament has not seen any business plan to reinvigorate PIA.

“Tabahi Sarkar has literally crashed PIA by compromising several Pakistani pilots with clean licenses, got the airline grounded in EU capitals after “Licensegate”, sold PIA assets abroad via crony shell firms and are now cannibalising “old PIA” to create new business ventures. This is a new low,” she stated while questioning the government business plan for the PIA.

Sherry Rehman said about 2,000 PIA employees have been forced to take voluntary redundancy and now the plan is to lay off half of its 14,000 employees. “The anti-people destruction regime in unprecedented ways as all they do is sack people in COVID times instead of creating jobs,” she added.

She questioned why did the government recently mislead the people by claiming PIA losses have been brought down and if this was the case then what losses are they talking about now. She said the carrier posted a net loss of Rs34.6 billion for 2020, its loan has caused an overall loss of Rs460bn, the iconic Roosevelt Hotel in New York has been sold and our profitable International routes were parceled to competitors. “PIA is still reeling from Tabahi Sarkar’s blows, and now employees are being cited as the problem, when in fact it is the sheer incompetence of this government,” she said.

Senator Sherry Rehman said everything cannot be blamed on the pandemic. Even without the COVID restrictions, PIA was banned from Europe and the US because of our minister’s callous statement. “Till date we have not seen him take responsibility for the loss that has occurred because of him,” she said.

She said this government has single-handedly brought down PIA’s reputation and prestige. “Our credibility is so damaged that there is no telling how long it will take to recover. Is this the vision PTI government has for PIA?” she questioned.

She said after spending hours in standing committees to get to the bottom of safety issues and the crash, all we got were long public spats between CAA and minister, who was never made accountable for huge reputational loss to PIA. “In this Naya Pakistan, accountability is only reserved for the opposition as the ministers and cronies are above law,” she said.