KARACHI: Amid suspension of flight operations and closure of majority of the country’s airports due to the government’s lockdown measures, the Civil Aviation Authority’s decision to hold a meeting of its departmental promotion committee (DPC) on Monday (today) has caused anxiety among its employees who questioned the alleged ‘haste’ behind the move, it emerged on Sunday.

According to a notification signed by CAA’s Human Resource Director Malik Mazhar Hussain, the DPC “to consider promotion cases of CAA officers of EG-01 to EG-06 is scheduled to be held at 1100hrs on April 6, 2020 (Monday)” at the headquarters of the aviation regulator.

It added that Additional Director General of the CAA Air Vice Marshal Tanveer Ashraf Bhatti would chair the meeting to be attended by other members of the promotion board.

It may be noted that the CAA is working without a permanent director general and its affairs are being looked after by the aviation secretary who sits in Islamabad.

Sources said that the top authorities had decided to promote 400 officers from across the country in one go and for this they were holding the meeting when the country was facing lockdowns.

They said that rumours were rife within the organisation that the meeting was being called in such a haste to ensure promotion to next grades of what they called favourite officials.

They asked as to why the meeting of the DPC was scheduled at a time when attendance in most branches of the CAA headquarters was quite thin and many airports and technical offices were closed due to the prevailing lockdowns.

The sources said that many officers were unable to get their year-wise performance evaluation reports signed and countersigned by their bosses and their cases might not be considered by the DPC since such a report was mandatory for the perusal of the committee before approving a promotion.

They said that instead of holding a DPC meeting, the CAA authorities should be more focussed on taking prompt measures to improve its earning, especially at a time when the coronavirus pandemic has hit hard the aviation industry.

They said that at a time when the organisation was expected to suffer huge monthly losses owing to suspension of flights operations it was not feasible to put an additional burden on the head of salary expenses by awarding promotions.

Recently, the top management of the Pakistan International Airlines, including its chief executive Air Martial Arshad Malik, had announced voluntary pay cuts in an attempt to symbolically mitigate losses due to the pandemic.

The annual income of the CAA in 2019 was Rs85 billion and it may suffer a monthly loss of Rs7bn if the crisis lingers on for a month.

When contacted, a spokesman for the CAA said that the matter pertained to the human resource department and right now he was not in a position to comment.

Published in Dawn, April 6th, 2020