New aviation policy hinders growth of local carriers: Palpa

Pakistan Airline Pilots' Association (Palpa) Monday said that the new aviation policy has restrained the growth of local carriers, hindering Pakistan Intentional Airlines (PIA) to get out of crisis.
This was stated by Palpa President Captain Hamza along with other office-bearers at a press conference held at PALPA House here.
It was a clear stance of the executive committee of Palpa on behalf of the membership that Palpa was against privatisation and lambasted the PIA management for delaying employees' salaries, aviation policy, and taking the aircraft on wet lease.
"The new aviation policy has failed to achieve the goals of providing field to the local carriers to grow, capability building, creating more jobs, and getting the national carrier PIA out of the crisis," said Captain Hamza, adding that instead of having industry-centric approach, the policy leans towards favouring foreign airline companies and attracting foreign organisations.
He further said that the policy document for 2015 had been prepared in isolation and it entailed more questions and problems rather than provision of answers and solutions.
"Instead of discussing item-wise specific issues and challenges faced by aviation in Pakistan, the report talks about mundane issues and practices of the industry that are not very relevant to ground realities in Pakistan," he added.
In the absence of such on-ground analyses, he said, the policy could merely be termed as an Aviation Infrastructure Development Plan as it did not fulfil the requirements of an acceptable strategic plan, which was required to be based on a broad vision instead of a myopic one.
Palpa General Secretary Captain Rizwan Ahmed expressed concern over the inordinate delay and discrepancies in the disbursement of the employees' salaries by the national airline.
He said PIACL management was violating the Annexure-A of Admin Order No. 07/2016 dated May 31, 2016 unilaterally, in response to unprecedented co-operation by the pilot community in the best/larger interest of the airline. As per Admin Order No. 24/2016 dated 22nd September 2016, Night Flying Credit is also admissible which is still pending from 1st April 2016 for unknown reasons, along with some amount which is being withheld every month, reason best known to PIACL management. Foreign allowance is also pending since many months," stated the secretary Palpa.
"Despite the assurance given by the Chairman PIACL last month that this matter would be resolved within two weeks but uptill now the salary issue persists... it would be very difficult for us to explain the pilot membership that why their salary is being disbursed in two parts and along with the withheld amount.," he added.