ISLAMABAD, Dec 7: The Senate Standing Committee on Defence was informed here on Thursday that Quetta airport was recently closed twice during the arrival of two senior military officers in violation of rules and that 333 flights of PIA were delayed only during the July-October period this year.

The committee directed the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) to inform it in writing why was the airport sealed off after an official of the finance ministry had said there were no rules to allow such a practice. The rules allowed security only in a certain area of the airport for VVIPs.

Senator Kamran Murtaza said he himself had witnessed that the military sealed off the airport twice, the latest on Dec 5, when Vice-Chief of Army Staff Gen Ahsan Saleem Hayat and Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee Chairman Gen Ehsanul Haq visited the city. For hours, he said, flights were delayed and passengers suffered.

Headed by Senator Nisar Memon, the committee directed the CAA to make public the report of the Multan air crash within one week. The authority was directed to submit another report on basic facilities missing at major airports. The committee was of the view that the CAA had failed to provide facilities to passengers at the airports despite levying heavy taxes.

The committee also directed the CAA to investigate into the procedure through which a licence was awarded to `Pakistan Airways’ for flying pilgrims to Saudi Arabia.

PIA LOSSES: PIA Chairman Tariq Kirmani informed the committee the airline had suffered a loss of Rs9 billion during the first nine months of the current financial year. He also said that his chief financial officer, Zafar Usmani, an ex-official of PTCL, was drawing a salary of Rs850,000 a month, which was more than his own salary.

Senator Enver Baig said that after Mr Kirmani took over, a good number of officials had been inducted in PIA as consultants from the telecommunication sector and banks on lucrative salaries. He said the airline was paying $10,000 a month to a consultant, Philip Moris, and Rs300,000 a month to Uzma Bashir, an ex-employee of the National Bank of Pakistan and appointed in PIA’s human resource department.

Besides, the airline had also appointed one of its own former officials, Naeem Sadiq, as health and safety expert on Rs7 million per three months. Mr Baig named a number of other employees who were being paid around half-a-million rupees per month.

The PIA chairman said that he was paying high salaries to consultants because of unavailability of experienced people in the market. He said the finance department was inefficient and did not update him on important figures.

"I am not aware of this. I will investigate it," Mr Kirmani said while replying to a question of Senator Rukhsana Zubairi, who said that airhostesses of PIA were made to stay `sub-standard’ hotels and that on several occasions they had been attacked.

The committee directed the PIA chief not to sack crew members with beard.