Federal Aviation Minister Ghulam Sarwar Khan on Friday vowed to take the pilots’ licence issue to its logical end.
Addressing a Senate session, Ghulam Sarwar Khan said that licences of those pilots who had sent someone else to sit the examination in their place will also be cancelled.
He accused the former governments of recruiting employees with dubious and fake degrees in the Pakistan International Airlines (PIA).
The minister said that the European Union and the United Kingdom had imposed ban on PIA for six months and added that the national flag carrier can challenge the ban in two months.
He told the house that 17 pilots and 96 technical staff had been dismissed from service over possession dubious degrees. The minister said that during the investigations, licences of 262 pilots were found dubious.
Earlier on July 7, the federal cabinet had approved the removal of 28 commercial pilots whose licences had already been proven dubious after an inquiry.
According to a declaration, the decision had come during the cabinet meeting with Prime Minister Imran Khan in the chair in Islamabad.
The cabinet meeting had decided to initiate criminal proceedings against the pilots. However, disciplinary action was being taken against few other pilots.
Meanwhile, Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Ali Muhammad Khan on Friday said that an increase of 7% in prices of essential and 10% in non-essential medicines was witnessed, but the government would review the increase to facilitate the people.
The minister was responding to a calling attention notice in Senate regarding the hike in prices of medicine by the government.
Khan said some market-driven factors caused an increase in the price of medicines. However, “the government would review these prices for the ease of people”.
Prices of 360 medicines were decreased by the incumbent government, but the medicine companies challenged it with the Sindh High Court, he said.
“The court has quashed most of their petitions and the government would do its best to bring down the prices,” he said.
The minister said that the PML-N government had introduced a policy during its tenure in May 2018 to fix prices of medicines and the incumbent government had no role in the price hike.
Last week, The Drug Regulatory Authority of Pakistan (DRAP) had stated that it had approved a 7% increase in the prices of essential drugs/biologicals and a 10% increase in other medicines.
The government had allowed a 5.14% increase in prices of essential medicines and biologicals whereas it had allowed a 7.3410% increase in prices of other medicines.
