Daily Times

Everybody has known about the rot that has set into not just PIA but all PSEs (Public Sector Enterprises) yet despite all the talk of reforms, overhaul and even privatisation for years if not decades on end, it finally took a monumental national disaster for the government to really wake up to the real problem. Even now, as authorities step over one another to conduct all sorts of inquiries into Friday’s crash, one can only hope that they will go all the way this time and really fix all that is wrong with the national carrier. Everybody is skeptical because if the past is anything to go by, they will express the most convincing grief on TV, order all sorts of investigations, even pay a few millions to the families of the deceased, and then soon enough forget about the whole thing like everybody else; till the next disaster at least. And so this cycle goes on in this country.

Pretty much the same happens when there is a railway accident, especially if a large number of lives is lost as a result of a national organisation running solely on incompetence. Everybody also knows that many of the problems of these PSEs started with our so called decade of democracy in the 1990s, when supporters of governments – who had helped the ruling party win the last election – were stuffed into them as quid pro quo for doing the right thing, as it were. Then, when the other party took office after the next election, it would bring its own political appointees into government service for the same reasons. And so this cycle has also gone on in this Islamic Republic. Sadly, nothing changed even as the party of change finally came to Islamabad. The result, not at all unpredictable, is that all this incompetence and nonsense sometimes results in the gravest oversight and the most horrific accidents, like the PIA plane crash in Karachi on Friday.

It does nobody any favours to ask the logical question, ‘who is to blame’? Because the whole system is to blame. And even if somebody seriously and sincerely wished to correct things, he wouldn’t even know where to start. The present PIA chairman seems to have done a remarkable job of returning the airline to profitability, but as the crash showed so vividly, there are far too deep rooted problems to contend with, and the financial side alone might make PIA bankrupt again. One can only hope that authorities have finally been jolted enough to begin implementing a series of correct, and much required, procedures. And Friday’s needless tragedy was the last of its kind. *