Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) passenger plane. File (image used for representation purpose only)
| Photo Credit: Reuters

A female Paki­stan International Airlines (PIA) flight attendant, who was caught smuggling foreign currency at the Allama Iqbal International Airport in Lahore, Punjab Province, has been sent on judicial remand.

Customs officials, who produced the suspect before a magistrate on July 27, sought her custody after she was detained on July 25 following the recovery of a large amount of Saudi Riyals in her socks during a body search, Dawn News reported on July 29.

A video of the cabin crew member taking out the currency notes has also gone viral on social media.

An FIR was registered against the flight attendant based on the complaint of Customs officials, who stopped the suspect while boarding PIA’s flight PK 203 from Lahore to Dubai.

“140,000 Saudi Riyals [around ₹10.4 million] were recovered from her possession during the search,” Raja Bilal Naseem, the Customs Deputy Collector at the International Airport, said.

He said customs authorities had intelligence reports of a possible attempt to smuggle currency through this flight.

The suspect has been booked under Section 139 of The Customs Act, 1969, which states that any passenger or crew member attempting to take out currency, gold, precious metals or stones by concealing them in baggage to avoid Customs will be charged with offences of smuggling.

A PIA spokesman said the air hostess would be terminated immediately if convicted.

Cash-strapped Pakistan is likely to privatize its national flag carrier by the first week of August, a media report said on Wednesday.

The much-anticipated privatization of Pakistan International Airline (PIA) has been on top of the agenda of the government after the groundwork was completed by the caretaker government that was in place to organize elections.

Citing sources close to the development, private television channel ARY News reported that six companies have been shortlisted for the privatization of the national flag carrier.

The shortlisted companies have sought details related to PIA and asked for time till July to review the financial issues of the national airline.

Meanwhile, the authorities are providing the required information to the consortium of shortlisted companies.

It is pertinent to mention here that a consortium of six companies has been pre-qualified for privatizing Pakistan International Airlines (PIA).

According to the details, the companies that lie in the pre-qualified consortium will now be eligible to participate in the bidding process for the PIA.

The decision was made during the Privatisation Commission Board meeting this week which was chaired by Privatization Minister Aleem Khan, who emphasized the government’s commitment to ensuring a transparent and efficient privatisation process for all loss-making state-owned companies.

To maintain transparency and foster confidence, Khan proposed broadcasting the privatisation proceedings live on media platforms to assure all stakeholders about the integrity of the process.

(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif. File
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Cash-strapped Pakistan will privatise all state-owned enterprises, including the loss-making Pakistan International Airlines, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif announced on May 14, broadening the government’s initial plans to make only loss-making state firms private.

The announcement to privatise state-run enterprises barring strategic ones comes a day after Pakistan started negotiations with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for a new long-term Extended Fund Facility (EFF).

Mr. Sharif announced this while chairing a review meeting on the privatisation process of loss-making state-owned enterprises (SOEs), according to media reports.

During the meeting, he said that apart from strategic state-owned firms, all other enterprises — profitable or loss-making — will be privatised, Geo News reported.

Asserting that the government’s job is not to do business but to ensure a business and investment-friendly environment, Mr. Sharif directed all ministries to take action and cooperate with the Privatisation Commission.

Underscoring the need for the privatisation process to be transparent, he ordered the privatisation process of Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) to be televised, including the bidding and other important steps. The PIA’s privatisation is in its final stage, the report said.

Pakistan’s ailing national flag carrier stood as the country’s third-highest public sector loss-making entity, requiring Pakistani Rs. 11.5 billion per month solely for servicing its debts.

The process of privatisation of other institutions will also be broadcast live, the report said.

A roadmap of the Privatisation Programme 2024-2029 was also presented during the meeting, The Express Tribune newspaper reported.

Ministers were informed that loss-making SOEs were to be privatised on a priority basis and that a pre-qualified panel of experts was being appointed in the Privatisation Commission to speed up the sell-off process, the report said.

Prime Minister Sharif-led government has pushed for the privatisation of several state-owned enterprises to tackle the burden on the exchequer and the prevailing financial crunch.

Previously, debt-struck Pakistan had plans to privatise only loss-making state-owned enterprises, the Dawn newspaper reported.

On May 12, Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb said that privatisation is necessary to achieve economic stability in the country.

“You have to move towards privatisation if you want economic stability in the country,” Mr. Aurangzeb said while speaking at the Pre-Budget Conference 2024-25 here.

Last week, Deputy Prime Minister Ishaq Dar said the government would limit its business only to strategic and essential SOEs under its domain and their number would be reduced from 40 after scrutiny.

Privatisation has long been on the Washington-based IMF’s list of recommendations for Pakistan, which is struggling with a high fiscal shortfall, the report said.

Pakistan narrowly averted default last summer, and the economy has stabilised after the completion of the last IMF programme, with inflation coming down to around 17% in April from a record high of 38% last May.

The country is still dealing with a high fiscal shortfall, and while the external account deficit has been controlled through import control mechanisms, it has come at the expense of stagnating growth, which is expected to be around 2% this year compared to negative growth last year.

Lahore:

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. 

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)