Senate Standing Committee on Defence and Defence Production asked the PIA management not to give in to blackmailing tactics of Palpa especially with regard to unjustified hefty increase in salaries, which would further increase the economic crunch being faced by the national flag carrier.
The committee made this observation during its meeting held at the Parliament House on Monday under the Chairmanship of Lieutenant General Javed Ashraf (Retd). The meeting observed that axe should not fall on lower level employees of the Corporation (group-1 - 4) in the name of rightsizing and downsizing to cut the losses.
It instructed that instead more attention be paid on promoting efficiency and injecting greater degree of professionalism. With regard to high officers to staff ratio, the Committee suggested that no further recruitment be made on posts which may become redundant due to the exercise carried out by the management for rightsizing the ratio and this step alone would correct the ratio to a large extent.
Senator Mian Raza Rabbani said it had been observed that whenever downsizing exercises were undertaken, it was the employees of lower cadres who got sacked. This should not go on like this and employee-friendly policies at the lower level be adopted.
The Committee recommended that possibility of operating at least three flights per week may be examined on the Zhob - Quetta route since a large number of businessmen, government employees and personnel of law enforcing agencies would benefit from this flight, who otherwise travel on the road which was much time consuming. PIA promised to reopen the route in November this year.
Deputy Chairman Senate, Jan Muhammad Khan Jamali said business should not be the sole criterion for the airlines when it came to linking people of far-flung areas especially in province like Balochistan. PIA must fulfil its social and national responsibility. He urged the corporation to fulfil quota requirements of Balochistan in various deficient cadres. The committee directed that a comprehensive briefing on the business/bail out plan be given in the first week of November in the light of instructions given by the committee from time to time.
While explaining the reasons for delay in flights from Dubai to Peshawar in the last week of July, MD PIA said the delays had occurred due to some technical reasons and there was no intention to frustrate Peshawar bound passengers. The committee directed the PIA authorities to avoid any kind of embarrassing situation during the Hajj operation and that professional and better trained officials should be deputed to handle the pilgrims.