ISLAMABAD, Nov 29: The members of the National Assembly Standing Committee on Rules and Procedures and Privileges on Tuesday took a serious notice of absence of the chairman of Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) and the managing director (MD) of Pakistan Television (PTV) from the committee’s meeting.

A source told Dawn that the committee members became angry when they came to know that the PIA chairman, Tariq Kirmani, and PTV MD, Arshad Khan, had not turned up for the meeting despite the fact that they had been issued advance notices.

The source said the committee members regarded the absence of the two officials as “misconduct under the rules” and decided to issue them a final notice to appear before the committee in the next meeting.

“The PIA chairman has been given the last chance to appear before the committee, otherwise action would be taken against him in accordance with the rules,” he said.

The committee members observed that it was a tendency of the senior government officers to avoid the committee meetings on one pretext or the other.

The chairman of the standing committee, Sardar Nasrullah Khan Dreshak, had convened the meeting to discuss six privilege motions submitted by various MNAs against departments and individuals. However, the committee could not discuss the motions moved by the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal (MMA) MNA Hanif Abbasi against the PIA and Dr Nisar Ahmed and others against the PTV due to the absence of their chiefs, and deferred the matters till next meeting.

The source said that MNA Hanif Abbasi had moved a privilege motion regarding misbehaviour of the PIA staff with him and other passengers at Jeddah Airport.

Mr Abbasi informed the committee that when he was coming from Saudi Arabia after performing Umrah, he saw some PIA officials at Jeddah Airport misbehaving with Pakistani travellers. When Mr Abbasi introduced himself and asked the PIA staff members to be polite, they asked the MNA to “mind your own business.”

Later, Mr Abbasi said, the PIA staff also called the police to remove him from the airport.

Similarly, the source said, MNA Dr Nisar Ahmed and some other MNAs had moved a privilege motion against the PTV for not giving news coverage to the meeting of the standing committee on narcotics. The committee members also expressed their displeasure at the absence of the information secretary from the meeting.

Meanwhile, discussing other privilege motions, the committee decided to summon the managing director of the Bank of Punjab, Hamesh Khan, DIG Larkana and DIG Sargodha Range in the next meeting to explain their positions.

The motion against misbehaviour of the MD of the Bank of Punjab had been submitted by Imtiaz Safdar Warraich of the People’s Party Parliamentarians. The motions against the misbehaviour of the police officials of Larkana and Sargodha had been moved by Hizbullah Bughio and Rana Asif Tauseef.

Those who attended the meeting included Makhdoom Syed Ahmed Alam Anwar, Zeb Gohar, Minister of State for Environment Malik Amin Aslam, Riaz Pirzada, Kunwar Khalid Yunus, Qazi Hussain Ahmed, Khawaja Asif and Federal Minister for Parliamentary Affairs Dr Sher Afgan.