The management of cash-stricken PIA, after getting approval from concerned ministries in principle, has agreed for a 45pc raise in salaries of most employees and only a formal consent of politically nominated Board of Directors is awaited, said sources in the national flag carrier on Sunday. The total additional impact in the head of salaries and allowances is expected to be over Rs13 billion, said sources.

According to PIA Third Quarter Report published for 2012, PIA had total accumulated losses of Rs 141.03 billion and liabilities exceeded its current assets by Rs123.475 billion as on 30 Sept 2012, as compared to Rs 88.22 billion on 31 Dec 2011.

Since there are no commercial reasons and revenue targets have nosedived, with built-in provision for annual increases ranging to almost 10pc for the world’s most surplus airline with highest employee to aircraft ratio, this decision at the end of 5 year rule by PPP led coalition, seems part of its routine political gimmicks for forthcoming elections.

The staff from pay Group 1 to 4 will get raise effective 1st January 2012, while pilots, aircraft engineers and flight engineers will receive this raise effective Jan 2013. The plan to give raise to officers of Pay Group 5 and above is currently under consideration and they are expected to get an average raise of over 30pc.

Revenue generation capacity has drastically reduced not just because of half the fleet has been grounded for technical defects but because of awarding traffic rights to Turk Hava Yollari at the expense of PIA by the nexus of powerful CFO CAA, who was closely related to most powerful political leader holding power in Islamabad and a Minister for State who benefited with GSA for services rendered, along with kickbacks by political cronies appointed as MD namely Aijaz Haroon and Yusafzai.

Some retired officers of the airlines were of the view that raise must be interlinked with performance of staff and financial health of the airline. He said that airline was facing worst time while employees and officers were being blessed with extraordinary salary raise which was not justified.

When contacted PIA spokesman said that pay raise decision was not announced all of sudden but it was scheduled in the PIA budget since 2012. He said that 45 percent raise was not annual raise but it was raise of two years including 20 percent for 2012 and 25 percent for 2013.

To a question that PIA was an airline with highest employees to aircraft ratio, he said it matters not whether how many employees per aircraft were working since our salary budget was less than any airline in the world which is below 16 percent of the total budget.