Pakistan International Airlines has resorted to widespread flight cancellation, leaving thousands of passengers in distress as the national flag carrier’s financial situation went from bad to worse.
Since Sunday, the airline has cancelled around 77 international and domestic flights due to the non-availability of fuel to manage its flight schedule.

Presently operating with just 16 aircraft, the partially state-owned airline, which the caretaker government wants to privatise, has got into a muddle with the Pakistan State Oil (PSO) refinery which supplies fuel to the airlines over non-payment of dues and its credit line.

A PSO official said the PIA owed billions of rupees in dues.

“This is the second time in seven days we have had to suspend supplying fuel to PIA because of the mounting unpaid dues. They are making partial payments to meet their daily fuel requirements but the dues remain unpaid as yet,” he said.

The airline, which was once considered the pride of Pakistan and was the first international airline to be given access to fly to Beijing, is said to be suffering millions in losses on a daily basis.

A PIA spokesperson confirmed that 77 flights had been cancelled since Sunday after the PSO cut the airline’s fuel supply.

“Today the situation has improved as payments have been made and matters are being sorted out with PSO,” he said.

He however could not confirm how many flights had flown on schedule on Monday but hoped the schedule would be normalised by late night.

“The airline couldn’t pay on Sunday due to banks being closed,” he explained.

The national carrier had 81 flights – 52 international and 29 on domestic routes – scheduled for take-off on Sunday. However, all but four international flights were cancelled, according to him.

The PIA spokesperson said flights had been partially restored on Monday.

Last month, a meeting of the Privatisation Commission agreed on a clear timeline for the privatisation of PIA.

The flight cancellations caused problems for thousands of travellers on international and domestic routes with many of them telling television channels they had never seen the situation so bad in the airline.

Aviation experts believe the airline’s poor state of affairs was mainly due to overstaffing and political appointments in PIA over the years and the decision of the government to have an open skies policy a decade back.

The airline has been so badly managed in the last few years that the PIA has even had its leased aircraft seized in foreign countries because of non-payment of dues.

In July, an aircraft was stopped in Kuala Lumpur by a leasing company as it wanted its dues cleared first.

To make matters worse, a former federal minister for aviation Ghulam Sarwar Khan caused the airlines to close its credibility in Europe and other countries when he claimed in the National Assembly that more than 30 per cent of the civilian pilots in the country held “fake” licences.

He claimed that 262 out of the 860 active pilots “did not take the exam themselves” and had paid someone else to appear on their behalf. 

The Enforcement Directorate alleged another “scam” in poll-bound Chhattisgarh on Monday, claiming a former managing director of the state Marketing Federation Limited or MARKFED, and an office-bearer of a local rice millers’ association generated Rs 175 crore in bribe for the “benefit of higher powers”.

Over the last few months, the agency has claimed to have unearthed a coal levy, a liquor duty and an illegal online betting app “scam” in the Congress-ruled state.

The agency has alleged that in all these instances, kickbacks worth crores of rupees were generated through a nexus of local politicians and bureaucrats. It has arrested a number of IAS officers, a police officer and some others.

In the latest alleged scam, the ED has claimed in a statement that it has found a similar nexus following searches conducted in the state against former MARKFED chief Manoj Soni, some office-bearers of the state rice millers’ association, including treasurer Roshan Chandrakar, district marketing officers and a few rice millers, on October 20 and 21.

The agency said its action under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act stems from a complaint filed by the Income-Tax Department before a Raipur court.

The department has alleged that the office-bearers of the Chhattisgarh rice millers’ association “colluded” with officials of the MARKFED and “hatched a conspiracy to misuse the special incentive, where Rs 40 per quintal of paddy was paid by the state government to rice millers for custom milling of rice”.

The state is known as the rice bowl of the country due to a high volume of paddy production.

The ED said this amount was “exorbitantly” increased to Rs 120 and this was paid in two instalments of Rs 60 each.

“The office-bearers of the Chhattisgarh state rice millers’ association under the leadership of its treasurer Chandrakar, in connivance with Soni, MD of MARKFED, started collecting a kickback amount of Rs 20 per instalment for each quintal of paddy milled from the rice millers.

“The details of the rice millers who have paid the cash amounts were sent by the district rice millers’ association to the concerned DMO,” the ED has found.

The DMOs, on receiving the bills of the rice millers, cross-checked those with the details received from the district rice millers’ association and this information was then passed on to the MARKFED head office, it said.

The bills of “only those rice millers who have paid a cash amount” to the association were cleared by the MD, MARKFED for payment, it has alleged.

The ED claimed the increase in the special allowance from Rs 40 to Rs 120 per quintal has released payments of Rs 500 crore, generating “kickbacks” of Rs 175 crore, which were collected by Mr Chandrakar with the assistance of Mr Soni for the benefit of “higher powers”.
The agency claimed it has seized “incriminating” documents, digital devices and “unaccounted cash” amounting to Rs 1.06 crore during the raids.

The 90-member Chhattisgarh assembly will go to polls in two phases on November 7 and November 17 and the counting of votes will be held on December 3. The electoral battle is largely between the Congress and BJP.

The Congress on Monday night declared its candidate for the last remaining assembly constituency in Madhya Pradesh, Amla in Betul district, but with a bureaucrat who was tipped to be the party nominee not getting government’s nod in time to quit service, the ticket has gone to someone else for the next month’s polls.

The opposition party fielded its member Manoj Malve from Amla and with this, it has completed the process of putting up nominees on all the 230 assembly seats for the November 17 elections.

The Congress, in two separate lists, had declared 229 candidates with only the Amla seat left out.

Earlier, Betul deputy collector Nisha Bangre, whose resignation is awaiting the state government’s approval, was tipped to be the Congress candidate from the constituency.

However, after the announcement of Mr Malve’s candidature, suspense over Ms Bangre’s entry into poll fray has ended.

Ms Bangre has approached the Madhya Pradesh High Court seeking direction to the government for speedy acceptance of her resignation, which she tendered on June 22.

However, the bureaucrat’s petition had been pending as she faces disciplinary proceedings, her counsel, senior advocate Brian De Silva, had said earlier.

While hearing her petition, the High Court in Jabalpur earlier last week directed the state government to take a decision by October 23 on her resignation from service and disciplinary proceedings against her.

With the Congress fielding candidates on all the 230 seats in MP, it is clear the national outfit has not entered into any tie-up with its two allies in the INDIA bloc, the Samajwadi Party (SP) or the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP).

The SP and the AAP have come out with separate lists of candidates for the polls in the BJP-ruled state.