ISLAMABAD, Dec 5: The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) will complete in a few days an inquiry into the July-10 crash of a Pakistan International Airlines passenger plane, which slammed into a wheat field near Multan, killing all 45 people on board.
“The CAA officials have also hired three foreign experts to make the inquiry as much impartial as possible. It is now a matter of a few days and not weeks that this inquiry would be completed,” PIA Chairman Tariq Kirmani informed the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) here on Tuesday.
PIA’s Roosevelt Hotel in New York and Scribe Hotel in France would also be sold through the Privatisation Commission of Pakistan, he said, adding that it would bring an end to a five-year-old controversy over the decision of PIA to step into a non-core business at a time when it needed to invest in human resources and service efficiency of the airline.
PAC member Qurban Ali Shah suggested to Mr Kirmani that the PIA management should itself invite tenders for the sale of the two hotels as the Privatisation Commission had now become a controversial entity the Steel Mills transaction.
Another member, Ghulam Akbar Mazhar Wains, informed the committee that he had forwarded a request to PML chief Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain to appoint two members from the opposition parties as members of the Cabinet Committee on Privatisation for making its transaction more transparent.
FINANCIAL TAILSPIN: Mr Kirmani also accepted as true media reports about the additional Rs22 billion the PIA needed from the government to get out of it financial crisis. He also accepted that the airline had suffered a loss of Rs60 million while selling the spares which it had bought but later appeared to be more than its need.
Shortly before making this statement, the PIA chief had criticised the media for being too negative on issues faced by the national flag carrier.
But, committee member Chaudhry Qamar Zaman Kaira told Mr Kirmani that so far almost all media reports about the airline had proven correct and the management should improve its performance instead of complaining about the media.
Mr Kirmani said the PIA management was stuck with fuel-guzzler old planes and a larger size of employees. Without getting rid of the old planes, some of which were as old as 20 to 35 years, it would be difficult for the airline to compete, he added.
The PIA management has now forwarded two proposals to the finance ministry, seeking government’s intervention to get out of the mess: a fuel equalisation fund and arranging a loan of Rs10 billion and rescheduling another Rs4 billion outstanding loan.
