EDITORIAL: Unfortunately, it has taken a great national tragedy - the crash of the PIA Airbus 320 in Karachi last month - for authorities to wake up to all the terrible corruption at the heart of the country's aviation industry. The picture that Aviation Minister Ghulam Sarwar Khan painted of the present state of affairs in the National Assembly, of 262 of the country's 860 pilots operating freely despite "dubious" licences and flying certificates, is simply unacceptable and requires the most serious investigation and action to hold every single person and department responsible to account. The PTI (Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf) government must be credited for making the initial report of the Karachi crash public, since such documents are traditionally brushed under the carpet or condemned to collecting dust in government offices and archives forever. But this is only the first step and any complacency at this point in time will be equally unforgivable. The government has said it is suspending all suspect pilots and those found guilty will surely be made to pay, so all eyes will now be on it to make sure this exercise comes full circle. PIA has also grounded 150 of its 434 pilots and a thorough cleansing is apparently under way. This is indeed a very serious lapse and means that unsuspecting passengers, who pay good money to travel by air, have had their lives played with for years. Therefore, the governments that never made such findings public before, nor did anything to solve the problem, are also culpable and must be made to answer for what is clearly criminal behaviour.
Such things begin to explain why plane crashes have become more common in Pakistan than other countries over the last few years - recent disasters include the Airblue crash in 2010, Bhoja Airlines crash in 2012, another plane crash in Chitral in 2016 and a crash landing in Gilgit in 2019. Now in addition to all the uproar from the public, the government must also deal with the fallout of the rounds this news item is doing in the international press. Already, the global airlines control body IATA (International Air Transport Association) has put out a statement questioning PIA's safety controls and Civil Aviation Authority's (CAA's) licensing and oversight policies. And the whole world's media is asking the same questions and drawing the same conclusions. How was it that such a situation developed over so long? Such a large number of pilots implies that they must have thousands of flying hours between them. And surely there must be a built-in system to check if something as essential as a pilot's flying licence is genuine. That things are as bad as they are points to a deeply entrenched system of corruption that must involve more than just a handful of people and offices. The last thing the country needs right now is for some international organisation to announce an investigation of its own and stop Pakistani pilots from flying into certain countries for some period of time.
The story of PIA's own crash landing is sadly a long and painful one and even something as big as fake pilots looks small once the bigger picture is considered. Yet in a country where some of the most seasoned politicians resorted to lying and all sorts of fraudulent behaviour when a graduate degree was made compulsory for an MNA or MPA position, it seems only natural for everybody to want to get away with whatever they can. Indeed it has been in times of democracy, when our elected politicians are supposed to legislate in the interest of people, that State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs) such as PIA and Pakistan Steel Mills were so mercilessly exploited. The only way to stop the rot, so to speak, is to identify as many of those people who harmed the system and the country as possible and make examples out of them; and carry on this exercise till there are no more to be found. Only the full force of the law can make sure that fake degrees and licences are no longer sought, given, allowed or tolerated. However, such an extensive exercise will take not just promises and slogans but extraordinary will and determination on the part of the government. The Pakistani nation has been truly stunned by this revelation. It is now up to the Pakistani government to make sure that those who have been bending and breaking the law all this time are equally shocked by its response.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2020
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