ONE doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry. The UK’s Greater Manchester Police has complained to the PIA management that its crew members are in the habit of stealing, and has asked the airline to take steps to prevent this. What have they been making off with? Objects of little worth, to be sure — glasses, towels, kettles etc from hotel rooms besides shoplifting small items — but this does little to lessen the degree of shame associated with such acts. The communication’s wording indicates the embarrassment of the police superintendent in raising the issue. In fact, the relatively low value of the items being pilfered would imply that PIA staff are indulging in this activity not out of need or for monetary gain — not that either would justify their illegal activities — but out of a callous disregard for rules and upright behaviour. Given that complaints have risen to a level where some action is necessary, the communication asks the airline to address the matter internally since, if arrested, crew members would have to be detained overnight thus disturbing flight schedules.

The shame this brings to Pakistan is made all the worse by the fact that such incidents involve the country’s flagship carrier. The manner in which PIA has been run to the ground over the past decades is widely known. The airline has fallen from being one of the world’s top fleets in the 1960s to a creaking state enterprise that is barely keeping afloat. Yet incompetence or mismanagement is one thing, petty criminality quite another.

Such activity only strengthens the impression that Pakistanis are an unruly and undisciplined people, who resort to malpractices not because they have to but because they revel in them. PIA had better clean up its act; meanwhile, the thieving crew should be ashamed of themselves.