Supreme Court of Pakistan has summoned PIA director finance along with the record of the fixation of pilots’ pension. Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) Mian Saqib Nisar is heading a three-member bench that is hearing this case. The chief justice, during the hearing, remarked that the PIA services rules do not mention pilots pension whereas there is no doubt that pilots are public servants.
On the other hand, the pilots are of the view that they are eligible to receive a pension under a trust deed. They said that after years of services as public servants they were only being paid Rs8,000 to Rs33,000 in pension.
Justice Faisal Arab questioned who is responsible for insufficient funds in the PIA trust fund. He remarked the court should itself decide what will be the volume of the pension. Justice Ijazul Ahsan remarked the court will review the order through which the pension of the pilots has been stopped. He further remarked the court will have to check if the funds are available in the trust account, adding that a rise in pension will only be possible when funds will be available in the account. The top court adjourned the case until December 5.
Earlier the Director general commercial audit evaluation south wrote to PIA that “during the scrutiny of finance fund section record regarding Government of Pakistan support to PIACL during the years 2008 to 2017, it was observed that Finance fund section of PIA provided a figure of Rs 23.565 billion, whereas the Ministry of Finance Government of Pakistan provided a figure of Rs 31.80 billion for the same period.”
The discrepancies were not int he funds but in guarantees too and the in the letter it is added that “Government of Pakistan guarantees issued in favour of PIACL showed a figure of 175.085 billion, whereas the Ministry of Finance reported a figure of Ks 177.230 billion.”
The Auditor General has asked PIA to clarify the above deficiency.
Nayyar Hayat has been PIA in April 2010 as General Manager Finance and later became airline’s chief financial officer. In 2017 he served as acting CEO when Bernd Hildenbrand was removed from the post in April 2017. He served as acting CEO for 3 months before Musharraf Rasool Cyan took over as the first CEO of PIA.
There have been corruption charges against Nayyar Hayat in the past and on 29 January 2016, he was removed from the position of Chief Financial Officer after Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan issued show cause notice to PIA over violating its rules. This was related to Rs 20 billion missing from employees provident fund. Nayyar Hayat was accused of “consuming Rs 20 billion of employees provident fund under various heads instead of depositing it in provident fund accounts.”
According to section 27 and 29 of companies ordinance 1984, misuse of provident fund is a criminal act. Appointment of any person who was dismissed for such offences is against the rules of PIA. But in complete disregard of this PIA management reappointed Nayyar Hayat as CFO and later as acting CEO.
Nayar Hayat has been at the centre of controversy for many years and a lot of leakages against Bernd Hildenbrand and the current management are reportedly stemming from his hands. In PIA it is well known that he hides key information from senior officials and drags his feet in implementing important decisions. He aspires to be the CEO but according to information available from his LinkedIn profile, he is not even qualified as CFO. There are corruption charges against him as well and he is notorious in PIA for “taking pleasure in teasing other officers by holding their files unnecessarily and raising irrelevant objections.”
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