KARACHI: The Pakistan International Airline (PIA) has started collecting federal excise duty on free/subsidised domestic tickets being issued to its employees and their family members, it is reliably learnt here.

The duty was imposed on all the airline employees at the time of budget but the implementation was suspended in the PIA owing to the protest from the workers, but from January 15 its collection has been started.

While the government expects to collect around Rs 300 million from the newly introduced duty, the trade unions as well as PIA management have urged the government not to impose the duty as the employees, keeping in view the ever-increasing inflation, were facing financial crunch.

Responding to Dawn queries, PIA spokesperson Haneef Rana said that this duty on domestic travel had been imposed at the time of budget but on the protest from the employees and request from the management the government had deferred it. But now it had been decided to collect the duty at the rate of Rs 5,040 on a ticket for a distance of more than 500 kilometres.

He said that the employees were protesting and keeping in view their resistance, the airline management had informed the prime minister’s advisor on aviation Shujaat Azeem.

Mr Shujaat, who was on a visit to the PIA head office in the city on Tuesday, was briefed about the resistance being put up by the workers.

The PM’s adviser assured the management that he would take up the issue with the federal government and hopefully it would be sorted out amicably.

To another question he said that there were around 18,000 employees and if they had at least three members in the family the number comes to around 54,000. He said that there were around 36,000 retired employees who also received subsidised / free travel facilities and this tax / duty would be recovered from them as well, he added.

Responding to the Dawn queries PIAC Employees Union chief Ubaidullah said that while airlines around the globe provided free / subsidised travel facilities to their employees none of the governments collected such a duty / tax on such facility. He termed government’s attitude with PIA employees ‘step-motherly’

It warned that if the newly imposed duty was not withdrawn immediately, the workers would launch a countrywide protest movement.

Giving some data, he said that 114,000 free tickets were issued to employees and their family members during 2014 and if similar number of tickets were issued in the current year then the new tax collected on such tickets would come to around Rs 285 million.

Responding to Dawn queries, a top Shaheen Air official said that the airline had been collecting the tax from the day it had been imposed i.e with the announcement of budget.

Published in Dawn, January 21st, 2015

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