IT has become a compulsive disorder for few, within corridors of power, who cannot resist temptation, to appoint unqualified and contentious to head state organizations and sports bodies, which were running efficiently. Both PIA and PCB are victims of this. Their financial success and lure of international travel, instead of being an asset, became a liability. Cricket was one of the rare passions of Pakistanis and even this has fallen prey to cronyism, nepotism and indiscipline. There was absolutely no justification for the choice of mediocrity at helm of PIA or PCB, by political and non-civil governments. Indiscipline and maladministration have wrecked Pakistan cricket. Players involved in match fixing, or throwing away a match, like the two controversial Ws etc., should have been disciplined and penalized and never rehabilitated, or given important assignments in PCB, with lucrative pay packages. Today we are reaping the harvest. The national team was eliminated in the first round. The Report by Coach Gary Kirsten must be given due importance.
Responsibility for team management on foreign tours, like World Cup in USA, vested with senior manager, coaches and other accompanying officials. They were required to keep players secure from unwanted elements, involved in betting mafia, which has become a billion-dollar industry. The Spot-Fixing scandal which occurred in August 2010 at Lords London resulted in conviction of three players Captain Salman Butt, Mohammad Asif and Mohammed Amir. Undercover reporters from “News of the World” secretly video- taped Mazhar Majeed accepting money for deliberately bowling no-balls at specific moments. A few other players were also filmed, but managed to get away, including a bowler whose jacket was used to hide the money. One of the managers accompanying the team was filmed with a few players accompanying Mazhar Majeed. It is the specific responsibility of manager and coaches to ensure discipline and keep a check on their whereabouts. National cricket team managers and captain, impose curfew restrictions to ensure that players are in their rooms latest by 9:00 pm, on days preceding the match.
A fast bowler was penalized in the 80s for violation of curfew timings. In major events like World Cup, the SOP is that players and officials are not accompanied with their spouses and children, to ensure that their focus be on practice session and strategy planning with coaches etc. However, this discipline gets routed, when the accompanying manager and officials, are accompanied with their families. They are not on recreation. This SOP, enforced by other major cricket teams, was flouted on this T20-World Cup tour. The players and officials were busy in recreation, shopping, sight-seeing and shamefully sponsored partying. Lessons should have been learned from 2010 disgraceful episode, where the captain himself was involved. Sports boards in Pakistan, headed by controversial figures have damaged the game. Most of our cricket players and other sportsmen and women come from humble backgrounds and need to be guarded from falling prey to temptation. Pakistan’s cricket players are handsomely compensated, far more than other players, and there is nothing wrong in this, because their earning tenure is limited to fitness and performance. Yet fitness itself, was compromised by the selectors.
PIA is another such success story, which fell prey to greed of politicized appointments of controversial mediocrity. It was the appointment of Rafique Saigal, followed by AM Nur Khan that PIA became a success story. PIA operations expanded, extending to four continents, during their tenure. This success was achieved, because the political civil government at helm, gave these gentlemen a free hand, with assurances of no political interference in terms of appointments, policies, distribution of sales agencies, choice of vendors for supply of essential spare parts etc. AM Nur Khan ventured into hospitality business by acquiring shares in Hotel Roosevelt in Manhattan NYC, Hotel Scribe in Paris etc. Nur Khan considered that hospitality business and commercial airline were both service oriented. He expected that these hotels, which PIA later fully acquired, would help and boost the national airline. Instead, vultures drove both these hotels into huge losses. Unfortunately, this was too much of a temptation for Zia to resist and his junta’s interference forced Nur Khan to resign. His choice of a Chairman PIA was an individual whom Hamood-ur-Rehman Commission had recommended to be court martialed. PIA’s first major controversial deal in fleet acquisition was inked by this team, when DC-10-30 aircraft were sold through a Florida-based agent Page-Avjet, and PIA ended up getting old B747, whose operational hours were near expiration. Former Canadian Pacific CEO in a statement published in Flight Magazine stated that his airline benefitted almost $20Million from this deal. Zia junta claimed this to be an exchange, which it was not. Next in line was Hotel Roosevelt etc., and this was the beginning of the decline of one of the rare success stories, this country could be proud of.
To keep pace with rapid technological advances in commercial aviation, there was a need to upgrade ab-initio qualifications, at time of induction, instead they were compromised. PIA’s human resources were bound to decline when the MD or Director Administration etc., were men who never went to a university and were just intermediate level. Commercial aviation industry is one of the most regulated industries, which is subjected to regulatory control of its own country and every other nation whose airspace it overflies or lands enroute. Even civil airport security is a specialized field, because air travellers must have easy access, while simultaneously being screened courteously through use of technology. Today all our civil airports do not meet international security standards. PIA and all other airlines registered in Pakistan are barred from direct flight operations to America because of poor security, lax immigration and oversight.
—The writer is contributing columnist, based in Lahore.
