ISLAMABAD: Supreme Court of Pakistan Friday imposed ban on fresh appointments in Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) till the court decides the fate of a case on illegalities and irregularities in the national airline.
A three-judge bench headed by Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, Justice Anwar Zaheer Jamali and Justice Jawad S. Khawaja heard the case.
The Chief Justice observed that as per report, the financial health of PIA was deteriorating as approximately 450 staffers have been deployed on single aircraft as compared to around 150 in other airlines.
Keeping in view this excessive recruitment, the court banned any fresh appointments in the organization.
Meanwhile, counsel for PIA Raja Basheer Ahmad handed over a booklet to the Chief Justice containing the material revealing poor financial conditions of the airline.
According to the booklet, in 2012, the PIA sustained the loss of Rs 22.43 billion against Rs 19.29 billion in the previous year proving that the losses were swelling every year.
During the proceeding, the Chief Justice asked as how many employees were working on regular basis and contractual basis and asked the concerned authorities to present record in this regard.
Moreover, Marvi Memon a PML-N leader said the PIA authorities should be asked as why the flights get delayed every day, requesting the court to direct the PIA to reform the entity without any delay.
The Chief Justice expressed his surprise to know that the PIA had no concrete plan to replace old aircrafts with the new ones.
To this, Chief Engineer PIA informed the court that they were getting eight aircrafts on lease under new policy allowing to get six to seven years old aircrafts what he observed would help improve the situation.
The court summoned the Chairman PIA and DG Civil Aviation to appear in person on next hearing to give a proper plan to resolve the matter.
The court also ordered the management to devise a strategy to ensure that flights should not be delayed to avoid inconvenience of the passengers who should be properly informed and managed if a flight gets delay owing to any valid reason.
Later, the court adjourned the case for two weeks.
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