Bilalwal slams PIA privatization move

F.P. Report

ISLAMABAD: Chairman PPP Bilawal Bhutto Zarrdari Thursday said that the Party will never permit the privatization of PIA and will resist any move towards this end at every platform.

He said this during a meeting with a 15-member delegation of PIA employees belonging to the Peoples Unity led by Hidayatullah Khan which called on him in Zardari House in Islamabad today.

Secretary General PPP Nayyer Bokhari, Spokesperson Senator Farhatulah Babar, Chaudhry Manzoor and Faiasl Karim Kundi were also present in the meeting.

Bilawal said that the Party was gravely concerned as strong evidence had come to surface during the past 5 years that faulty policies were deliberately adopted to make the PIA and Pakistan Steel Mills (PSM) incur huge losses running in to hundreds of billions of rupees.

The criminal neglect in running these state run entities shows that it was by design so that they incurred huge liabilities and thereby a false justification was created for their sale at throw away prices, he said.

Recounting these faulty policies he said that the PIA had no business plan and floated a thoughtless Premier Service which incurred a loss of nearly 3 billion rupees in a few months before the service was discontinued due to severe public criticism.

Bilawal said that highly expensive lease agreements, open skies policy without consideration of national interest and discontinuation of some profitable international led the PIA down a steep slope. Tens of landing rights in different parts of the country were given to just one foreign airline in one day and without reciprocity drastically reducing PIA’s market share, he said.

Spokesperson Farhatulllah Babar said that the Chairman PPP also asked the Peoples Unity employees to prepare a comprehensive report on how the national airline was deliberately mis-managed to pave way for its sale to private party at a throw away price.

Bilawal said that the PSM reached the brink of precipice after it was denied gas supply since 2015 and that too at a time the production was 65 per cent.