Oppositions have created an impression, in-vivo and in-vitro of the parliament to conceal their wrong doings in terms of destroying PIA to its core by political appointments, including that of Shahid Khaqaan Abbasi as its chairman in the past and deliberately neglecting the modernization of the national carrier, which led to suspension of its flights operation twice on the international routes. Senior leaders of the opposition parties alleged that it was the statement of aviation minister about the dubious licenses of pilots, which discredited PIA reputation and it was an overt move to pave the way for auctioning it to private cartels. On the contrary, the appointment of the professional and dedicated top management by the PTI government made a lot of efforts to substantially reduce the losses of the airline and is keen to elevate it to its past glory by inducting state of the art aircrafts, commendable improvement in the service, provided during flights to the passenger on domestic and international routes. The Aviation Minister Ghullam Sarwar Khan had to call a spade a spade of the oppositions and told Senate that PIA is not being privatized and its restructuring is on cards. He repudiated the opposition’s propaganda by his factual statements and clarified that the issue of fake credentials of several pilots was not a covert attempt to make a rationale for privatization. He iterated chronological events, since 2007, highlighting, how the previous two ruthless governments pushed this national asset of strategic importance into disarray and turned it into hemorrhaging entity. While informing the upper-house, brick by brick leading to the disrepute of PIA, he told European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) had imposed ban on PIA flights in 2007, which remained till 2009. Moreover, the airline was under constant surveillance since then. He informed the house that EASA had given six observations for the compliance till June, 2020. The minister also referred to the suo motu notice taken by the Supreme Counrt on the alleged fake degrees of PIA employees in 2018, when PTI was not in government. He told that in compliance with Apex Court directives, in all, 600 employees were terminated including 17 pilots, technical staff, cabin crew and ground handlers, who possessed fake credentials. Over the years, the strategic importance of PIA was ignored. In the past political managements did two things, overstaffing and delaying purchase of new airplane, which abnormally increased the maintenance and fuel cost, to pave the way for its eventual privitisation on throw away price.
