Privatization list does not include PIA, we have to restructure it: Ghulam Sarwar

Federal Minister for Aviation Ghulam Sarwar has said that the government is not privatizing the national airline (PIA), PIA is not included in the privatization list but we have to restructure it.

A meeting of the Upper House was held under the chairmanship of Deputy Chairman Senate Saleem Mandviwalla in which the Aviation Minister said that the process of verification of credentials had started with the intervention of the Supreme Court after which the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) also started working on pilot licenses on its own and when verified and inquired, the licenses of many pilots were found to be questionable.

He went on to say that the pilots had been given show-cause notices, given charge sheets, called in person for a hearing and some even admitted that their numbers were quite high.

The Federal Minister said that after which an inquiry board headed by a 22nd-grade officer was constituted in February 2019, which also included IT experts, adding that a new examination procedure has been introduced in 2020. ۔

The aviation minister said the investigation revealed that the pilots had taken the wrong approach in conducting the test, which led to a forensic inquiry and took a year and four months, after which a report was submitted to the aviation division.

The Federal Minister said that the Civil Aviation Authority has acknowledged that they had issued the licenses and the reply submitted to the Supreme Court also included the number of 262 pilots, on which the Supreme Court confirmed the number.

Continuing the talk, he said that after taking action in 2 weeks, he has also directed to submit the report again.

He further said that 5 people of the licensing authority were also suspended in this regard, the matter will not stop here but will go to a logical conclusion.

“We have tasked the highly educated members of the Board of Inquiry, who are volunteering for this purpose, to reach out to the facilitator and the culprit,” he said.

Ghulam Sarwar said that there is no political motive, no blame game in this matter that we have to put this issue on the previous government but it is a matter of human lives, their protection.

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