This is apropos a Business Recorder news item "PIA decides to transfer 450 employees from Karachi to Islamabad" carried by the newspaper yesterday.

According to it, the national carrier, Pakistan International Airlines (PIA), has transferred as many as 450 marketing employees from Karachi to Islamabad. Those who have been ordered to be transferred have been asked to shift themselves from Karachi to Islamabad by Dec 28, 2020. As pointed out in the news item, the "affected" PIA employees included women officers. I have a couple of questions for the PIA management to answer: Does the move stem from a concrete and new strategy aimed at boosting PIA's revenues? Are there plans to shift PIA's head office in Karachi to Islamabad as these large scale transfers show? Is the plan to carryout "creative" downsizing as many of them, if not most, will be forced to avail the option of quitting the organization for some arguably plausible reasons?

Mehdi Hasan (Karachi)

Copyright Business Recorder, 2020