Govt making efforts to provide int'l facilities at airports: Dar

SIALKOT: Special Assistant to Prime Minister on Youth Affairs Usman Dar on Wednesday said the government was making sincere efforts to ensure the provision of international standard aviation facilities to passengers at all airports in the country.

He said this while inaugurating the direct international flights of the Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) between London and Sialkot from the Sialkot International Airport here.

Chairman SIAL Nadeem Anwar Qureshi, Vice Chairman Muhammad Afzal Shaheen, CEO Maj-Gen (retd) Abid Nazir, Manager Public Relations Abdul Shakur Mirza, senior PIA officials and others people attended the ceremony.

Addressing the participants, Usman Dar hailed the Sialkot exporters' spirit and struggling for establishing Asia's first-ever private Sialkot international airport on self-help basis. Now,

they had established their own private airline Air Sal on self-help basis, setting a unique example of self-help for the others to replicate it.

On this occasion, Sialkot International Airport Limited (SIAL) Chairman Nadeem Anwar Qureshi said the success of Sialkot international airport had also been building trust and confidence of the foreign airlines as well.

He pledged to provide the international standard aviation facilities to passengers at the Sialkot airport here as well.

He said the grand project of Sialkot airport had been playing a pivotal role in opening the new vistas of socio-economic and human development in Pakistan's first-ever 'Golden Export Triangle' comprising Sialkot, Gujrat and Gujranwala districts besides helping a lot of boosting exports.

Chairman SIAL Business Development Committee Mian Naeem Javaid said the Sialkot airport was now proving itself as a milestone towards stability of the national economy and there was no doubt that the project had now become a success story.

Mian Naeem Javaid added that several more international airlines would soon start their flights from Sialkot international airport.

Meanwhile, Special Assistant to Prime Minister on Youth Affairs Usman Dar, SIAL Chairman Nadeem Anwar Qureshi and senior PIA officials accorded rosy welcome to passengers of the PIA flight arrived here from London.

Later, PIA's flight took off to London from the Sialkot International Airport as senior officials of the PIA and SIAL saw off passengers.